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SEYMOUR  DURST 


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Gift  of  Seymour  B.  Durst  Old  York  Library 


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OUR  PHILADELPHIA 
AUTOGRAPH  EDITION 


OF  THIS  AUTOGRAPH  EDITION 
TWO  HUNDRED  AND  EIGHTY-NINE 
COPIES   HAVE  BEEN  PRINTED 


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LOOKING  IP  BROAD  STREET  FROM  SPRUCE  STREET 


OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

DESCRIBED  BY  ELIZABETH  ROBINS 
PENNELL  ILLUSTRATED  WITH 
ONE  HUNDRED  k  FIVE  LITHO- 
GRAPHS   BY    JOSEPH    PENNELL 


AUTOGRAPH  EDITION 
WITH  TEX  ADDITIONAL  LITHOGRAPHS 


ir 


-  -  ■•^?fe.i^ 


PHILADELPHIA   AND   LONDON 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT   COMPANY 

MCMXIV 


COPYRIGHT.  19U,  BY  J.  B.  LIPPINXOTT  COMPANY 


PUBLISHED  OCTOBER,  19U 


PRINTED  BY  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

AT  THE  WASHINGTON  SQUARE  PRESS 

PHILADELPHIA,   U.  S.  A. 


AUTOGRAPH  EDITION 

THIS  EDITION,  LIMITED  TO  THE  NUMBER 
OF  SUBSCRIPTIONS  AND  CONTAINING  IN 
ADDITION  TO  ALL  THE  ILLUSTRATIONS 
OF  THE  REGULAR  EDITION  TEN  EXTRA 
DRAWINGS  REPRODUCED  BY  A  NEW 
PROCESS  OF  LITHOGRAPHY,  IS  AUTO- 
GRAPHED BY  THE  AUTHOR  AND  ARTIST 


:f^c.^^^^  r^^--^ 


i 


PREFACE 

To-day,  when  it  is  the  American  born  in  the  Ghetto, 
or  Syria,  or  some  other  remote  part  of  the  earth,  whose 
recollections  are  prized,  it  may  seem  as  if  the  following 
pages  called  for  an  apolog}\  I  have  none  to  make.  They 
were  written  simply  for  the  pleasure  of  gathering  to- 
gether my  old  memories  of  a  town  that,  as  my  native  place, 
is  dear  to  me  and  my  new  impressions  of  it  after  an  absence 
of  a  quarter  of  a  century.  But  now  I  have  finished  I  add 
to  this  pleasure  in  my  book  the  pleasant  belief  that  it  will 
have  its  value  for  others,  if  only  for  two  reasons.  In 
the  first  place,  J.'s  drawings  which  illustrate  it  are  his 
record  of  the  old  Philadelphia  that  has  passed  and  the 
new  Philadelphia  that  is  passing — a  record  that  in  a  few 
years  it  will  be  impossible  for  anybody  to  make,  so  con- 
tinually is  Philadelphia  changing.  In  the  second,  my 
story  of  Philadelphia,  perfect  or  imperfect,  may  in  as 
short  a  time  be  equally  impossible  for  anybody  to  repeat, 
since  I  am  one  of  those  old-fashioned  Americans,  Ameri- 
can by  birth  with  many  generations  of  American  fore- 
fathers, who  are  rapidly  becoming  rare  creatures  among 
the  hordes  of  new-fashioned  Americans  who  were  any- 
thing and  everj'thing  else  no  longer  than  a  year  or  a  week 
or  an  hour  ago. 

Elizabeth  Robins  Pennell 

3  Adelpbi  Terrace  House,  London 
Mav,  1914 


I 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAUE 

I.  An  Explanation 1 

II.  A  Child  in  Philadelphia 24 

III.  A  Child  in  Philadelphia  (Continued) 48 

IV.  At  the  Convent 72 

\.  Transitional 104 

VI.  The  Social  Adventure 130 

VII.  The  Social  Adventure:    The  Assembly 154 

VIII.  A  Question  of  Creed 175 

IX.  The  First  Awakening 205 

X.  The  Miracle  of  Work 233 

XI.  The  Romance  of  Work 268 

XII.  Philadelphia  and  Literature 304 

XIII.  Philadelphia  and  Literature  (Continued) 332 

XIV.  Philadelphia  and  Art 368 

XV.  Philadelphia  and  Art  (Continued) 390 

XVI.  Philadelphia  at  Table 413 

XVII.  Philadelphia  at  Table  (Continued) 433 

XVIII.  Philadelphia  after  a  Quarter  of  a  Century 451 

XIX.  Philadelphia    after    a    Quarter    of    a    Century 

(Continued) 477 

XX.  Philadelphia    after     a    Quarter    of    a    Century 

(Continued) 509 

Index 543 


LITHOGRAPHS 

INCLUDED  ONLY  IN  THE  AUTOGRAPH  EDITION 

PAGE 

Contrasts.     Up  Broad  Street  from  "The  Walton" 10 

Old  Swedes'  from  the  Churchyard 42 

Up  the  Schuylkill  from  the  Old  Reservoir 78 

Congress  Hall,  Independence  Hall,  and  the  Drexel  Building 112 

Finishing  the  West  End  of  the  Bellevue-Stratford 146 

Logan  Square  and  the  Cathedral 198 

Out  in  Fairmount  Park 298 

At  Stenton 356 

City  Hall  from  South  Broad  Street 472 

Down  Market  Street  from  Thirty-second  Street 530 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

Looking  up  Broad  Street  from  Spruce  Street Frontispiece 

Delancey  Place 3 

"Portico  Row,"  Spruce  Street 7 

Arch  Street  Meeting  House 13 

The  Schuylkill  South  from  Callowhill  Street 17 

Friends'  Graveyard,  Germantown 21 

In  Rittenhouse  Square 25 

The  Pennsylvania  Hospital  from  the  Grounds 29 

"  Eleventh  and  Spruce  " 33 

Drawing  Room  at  Cliveden 37 

Back-yards,  St.  Peter's  Spire  in  the  Distance 45 

Independence  Square  and  the  State  House 51 

Christ  Church  Interior 57 

Classic  Fairmount 65 

Down  Pine  Street 69 

Loudoun,  Main  Street,  Germantown 75 

Entrance  to  Fairmount  and  the  Washington  Statue 83 

Main  Street,  Germantown 89 

Arch  Street  Meeting 95 

The  Train  Shed,  Broad  Street  Station 99 

St.  Peter's,  Interior 105 

The  Pennsy'lvania  Hospital  from  Pine  Street 109 

Second  Street  Market 115 

Fourth  and  Arch  Streets  Meeting  House 121 

Johnson  House,  Germantown 127 

The  Customs  House 131 

Under  Broad  Street  Station  at  Fifteenth  Street 135 

The  Philadelphia  Club,  Thirteenth  and  Walnut  Streets 141 

The  New  Ritz-Carlton;  The  Finishing  Touches:  The  Walnut  Street 

Addition  Has  Since  Been  Made 149 

xiii 


xiv  ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Hall,  Stenton 155 

"Proclaim  Liberty  Throughout  all  the  Land  unto  all  the  Inhabi- 
tants Thereof" 159 

Bed  Room,  Stenton,  the  Home  of  James  Logan 163 

The  Tunnel  in  the  Park 167 

The  Boat  Houses  on  the  Schuylkill 171 

The  Pulpit,  St.  Peter's 179 

The  Cathedral,  Logan  Square 185 

Christ  Church,  from  Second  Street 189 

First  Presbyterian  Church,  Seventh  Street  and  Washington  Square  195 

Old  Swedes'  Church 201 

Independence  Hall:   The  Original  Desk  on  Which  the  Declaration 
OF  Independence  was  Signed  and  the  Chair  Used  by  the  President 

OF  Congress,  John  Hancock,  in  1776 207 

Philadelphia  from  Belmont 211 

The  Dining  Room,  Stenton 217 

Down  the  Aisle  at  Christ  Church 223 

The  Bridge  Across  Market  Street  from  Broad  Street  Station  ....  229 

State  House  Yard 235 

The  Penitentiary 247 

On  the  Reading,  at  Sixteenth  Street 251 

Locust  Street  East  from  Broad  Street 255 

Broad  Street,  Looking  South  from  above  Arch  Street 261 

Clinton  Street,  with  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital  at  its  End 265 

The  Cherry  Street  Stairs  Near  the  River 269 

The  Morris  House  on  Eighth  Street 273 

The  Old  Coaching-Inn  Yard 279 

Franklin's  Grave 285 

Arch  Street  Meeting 291 

Cliveden,  the  Chew  House 295 

Bartram's 301 

Carpenter's  Hall,  Interior 305 

Main  Street,  Germantown 311 

Arch  Street  Meeting — Interior 317 

Front  and  Callowhill 321 

The  Elevated  at  Market  Street  Wharf 327 


ILLISTRATIONS  xv 

Dr.  Furness's  House,  West  Washington  Square,  Just  Before  it  was 

Pulled  Down 333 

The  Germantown  Academy 339 

The  State  House  from  Independence  Square 345 

"The  Little  Street  of  Clubs,"  Camac  Street  Above  Spruce  Street  349 
Down   Sansom    Street  from   Eighth   Street.     The   Low   Houses  at 
Seventh  Street  Have  Since  Been  Torn  Down  and  the  Western 

End  of  the  Curtis  Building  Now  Occupies  Their  Place 353 

The  Double  Stairway  in  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital 359 

Carpenter's  Hall,  Built  1771 365 

Independence  Hall — Lengthwise  View 369 

Girard  College 377 

Upsala,  Germantown 383 

The  Hall  at  Cliveden,  the  Chew  House 387 

The  Old  Water- Works,  Fairmount  Park 391 

The  Stairway,  State  House 397 

Upper  Room,  Stenton 403 

Wyck — The  Doorway  from  W'ithin 409 

The  Philadelphia  Dispensary  from  Independence  Square 415 

Morris  House,  Germantown 419 

The  State  House  Colonnade 425 

The  Smith  Memorial,  West  Fairmount  Park 431 

The  Basin,  Old  Water- Works 435 

Girard  Street 441 

The  Union  League,  from  Broad  and  Chestnut  Streets 445 

Broad  Street  Station 453 

Wanamaker's 457 

St.  Peter's  Churchyard 461 

City  Hall  from  the  Schuylkill 465 

Chestnut  Street  Bridge 469 

The  Narrow  Street 475 

The  Market  Street  Elevated  at  the  Delaware  End 479 

The  Railroad  Bridges  at  Falls  of  Schuylkill 483 

The  Parkway  Pergolas 487 

Market  Street  West  of  the  Schuylkill 491 

Manheih  Cricket  Ground 497 


xvi  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Dock  Street  and  the  Exchange 501 

The  Locomotive  Yard,  West  Philadelphia 507 

The  Girard  Trust  Company 511 

Twelfth  Street  Meeting  House 515 

Wyck 519 

The  Massed  Sky-scrapers  Above  the  Housetops 523 

Sunset.     Philadelphia  from  Across  the  Delaware 527 

The  Union  League  Between  the  Sky-scrapers 531 

Up  Broad  Street  from  League  Island 535 

From  Gray's  Ferry 539 


OUR    PHILADELPHIA 

CHAPTER  I:  AN  EXPLANATION 

I 

I  THINK  I  have  a  right  to  call  myself  a  Philadelphian, 
though  I  am  not  sure  if  Philadelphia  is  of  the  same 
opinion,  I  was  born  in  Philadelphia,  as  my  Father 
was  before  me,  but  my  ancestors,  having  had  the  sense  to 
emigrate  to  America  in  time  to  make  me  as  American  as 
an  American  can  be,  were  then  so  inconsiderate  as  to 
waste  a  couple  of  centuries  in  Virginia  and  Maryland, 
and  my  Grandfather  was  the  first  of  the  family  to  settle 
in  a  town  where  it  is  important,  if  you  belong  at  all,  to 
have  belonged  from  the  beginning.  However,  J.'s  ances- 
tors, with  greater  wisdom,  became  at  the  earliest  available 
moment  not  only  Philadelphians,  but  Philadelphia 
Friends,  and  how  very  much  more  that  means  Philadel- 
phians know  wathout  my  telling  them.  And  so,  as  he 
does  belong  from  the  beginning  and  as  I  would  have  be- 
longed had  I  had  my  choice,  for  I  would  rather  be  a 
Philadelphian  than  any  other  sort  of  American,  I  do  not 
see  why  I  cannot  call  myself  one  despite  the  blunder  of 
my  forefathers  in  so  long  calling  themselves  something 

else. 

1  1 


2  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

I  might  hope  that  my  aiFection  alone  for  Philadelphia 
would  give  me  the  right,  were  I  not  Philadelphian  enough 
to  know  that  Philadelphia  is,  as  it  always  was  and  al- 
ways will  be,  cheerfully  indifferent  to  whatever  love  its 
citizens  may  have  to  offer  it.  I  can  hardly  suppose  my 
claim  for  gratitude  greater  than  that  of  its  Founder  or 
the  long  succession  of  Philadelphians  between  his  time 
and  mine  who  have  loved  it  and  been  snubbed  or  bullied  in 
return.  Indeed,  in  the  face  of  this  Philadelphia  indiffer- 
ence, my  affection  seems  so  superfluous  that  I  often 
wonder  why  it  should  be  so  strong.  But  wise  or  foolish, 
there  it  is,  strengthening  with  the  years  whether  I  will  or 
no, — a  deeper  rooted  sentiment  than  I  thought  I  was 
capable  of  for  the  town  with  which  the  happiest  memo- 
ries of  my  childhood  are  associated,  where  the  first  irre- 
sponsible days  of  my  youth  were  spent,  which  never 
ceased  to  be  home  to  me  during  the  more  than  a  quarter 
of  a  century  I  lived  away  from  it. 

Besides,  Philadelphia  attracts  me  apart  from  what  it 
may  stand  for  in  memory  or  from  the  charm  sentiment 
may  lend  to  it.  I  love  its  beauty — the  beauty  of  tranquil 
streets,  of  red  brick  houses  with  white  marble  steps,  of 
pleasant  green  shade,  of  that  peaceful  look  of  the  past 
Philadelphians  cross  the  ocean  to  rave  over  in  the  little 
old  dead  towns  of  England  and  Holland — a  beauty  that 
is  now  fast  disappearing.  I  love  its  character — the  calm, 
the  dignity,  the  reticence  with  which  it  has  kept  up  through 


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DELANCEY  PLACE 


AN  EXPLANATION  5 

the  centuries  with  the  American  pace,  the  airs  of  a  demure 
country  village  with  which  it  has  done  the  work  and 
earned  the  money  of  a  big  bustling  town,  the  cloistered 
seclusion  with  which  it  enjoys  its  luxury  and  hides  its 
palaces  behind  its  plain  brick  fronts — a  character  that  also 
is  fast  going.  I  love  its  history,  though  I  am  no  historian, 
for  the  little  I  know  colours  its  beauty  and  accounts  for 
its  character. 

II 

It  is  not  for  nothing  that  I  begin  with  this  flourish 
of  my  birth  certificate  and  public  confession  of  love,  I 
want  to  establish  my  right,  first,  to  call  myself  a  Phila- 
delphian,  and  then,  to  talk  about  Philadelphia  as  freely 
as  we  only  can  talk  about  the  places  and  the  people  and 
the  things  we  belong  to  and  care  for.  I  would  not  dare  to 
take  such  a  liberty  with  Philadelphia  if  my  references 
were  not  in  order,  for,  as  a  Philadelphian,  I  appreciate  the 
risk.  Not  that  I  have  any  idea  of  writing  the  history  of 
Philadelphia.  I  hope  I  have  the  horror,  said  to  be  pecu- 
liar to  all  generous  minds,  of  what  are  commonly  called 
facts,  and  also  the  intelligence  not  to  attempt  what  I  know 
I  cannot  do.  Another  good  reason  is  that  the  history  has 
already  been  written  more  than  once.  Philadelphians, 
almost  from  their  cave-dwelling  period,  have  seemed  con- 
scious of  the  eye  of  posterity  upon  them.  They  had 
hardlv  landed  on  the  banks  of  the  Delaware  before  they 


6  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

began  to  write  alarmingly  long  letters  which  they  pre- 
served, and  elaborate  diaries  which  they  kept  with  equal 
care.  And  the  letter-writing,  diary-keeping  fever  was  so 
in  the  air  that  strangers  in  the  town  caught  it:  from 
Richard  Castleman  to  John  Adams,  from  John  Adams  to 
Charles  Dickens,  from  Charles  Dickens  to  Henry  James, 
every  visitor,  with  wTiting  for  profession  or  amusement, 
has  had  more  or  less  to  say  about  it — usually  more. 
The  Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvania  has  gathered  the 
old  matei'ial  together;  our  indispensable  antiquary,  John 
Watson,  has  gleaned  the  odds  and  ends  left  by  the  way; 
and  no  end  of  modern  writers  in  Philadelphia  have  ran- 
sacked their  stores  of  information:  Dr.  Weir  ISIitchell 
making  novels  out  of  them,  Mr.  Sydney  Fisher  and  Miss 
Agnes  Repplier,  historj^;  INIr.  Hampton  Carson  using 
them  as  the  basis  of  further  research;  Miss  Anne  Hollings- 
worth  Wharton  resurrecting  Colonial  life  and  society  and 
fashions  from  them,  ]Mr.  Eberlein  and  Mr.  Lippincott,  the 
genealogy  of  Colonial  houses ;  other  patriotic  citizens  help- 
ing themselves  in  one  way  or  another;  until,  among  them 
all,  they  have  filled  a  large  library  and  prepared  a  suffi- 
ciently formidable  task  for  the  historian  of  Philadelphia  in 
generations  to  come  without  my  adding  to  his  burden. 

Ill 

It  is  an  amusing  library,  as  Philadelphians  may  be- 
lieve now  they  are  getting  over  the  bad  habit  into  which 
they  had  fallen  of  belittling  their  town,  much  in  their 


'  PORTICO  ROW  •■  SPRUCE  STREET 


AN  EXPLANATION  9 

town's  fashion  of  belittling  them.  I  am  afraid  it  was 
partly  their  fault  if  the  rest  of  America  fell  into  the  same 
habit.  As  I  recall  my  old  feelings  and  attitude,  it  seems 
to  me  that  in  my  day  we  must  have  been  brought  up  to 
look  down  upon  Philadelphia.  The  town  surely  cut  a 
poor  figure  in  my  school  books,  and  the  purplest  patches 
in  Colonial  history  must  have  been  there  reserved  for 
New  England  or  New  York,  Virginia  or  the  Carolinas, 
for  any  and  every  colony  rather  than  the  Province  of 
Pennsylvania,  or  I  would  not  have  left  school  better 
posted  in  tlie  legends  of  Powhatan  and  Pocahontas  than 
in  the  life  of  William  Penn,  and  more  edified  by  the  burn- 
ing of  witches  and  the  tracking  of  Indians  than  by  the 
struggles  of  Friends  to  give  every  man  the  liberty  to  go 
to  Heaven  his  own  way.  The  amiable  contempt  in  which 
Philadelphians  held  William  Penn  revealed  itself  in  their 
free-and-easy  way  of  speaking  of  him,  if  they  spoke  of 
him  at  all,  as  Billy  Penn,  though  Penn  w^ould  have  been 
the  last  to  invite  the  familiarity.  Probably  few  outside  the 
Society  of  Friends  could  have  said  just  what  he  had  done 
for  their  town,  or  just  what  they  owed  to  him.  If  I  am 
not  mistaken,  the  prevailing  idea  was  that  his  chief  great- 
ness consisted  in  the  cleverness  with  which  he  fooled  the 
land  out  of  the  Indians  for  a  handful  of  beads. 

The  present  generation  could  not  be  so  ignorant  if  it 
wanted  to.  The  statue  of  Penn,  in  full-skirted  coat  and 
broad-brimmed  hat,   dominating  Philadelphia   from  the 


10  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

ugly  tower  of  the  Public  Buildings,  though  it  may  not  be 
a  thing  of  beauty,  at  least  suggests  to  Philadelphians  that 
it  would  not  have  been  put  up  there,  the  most  conspicuous 
landmark  from  the  streets  and  the  surrounding  country, 
if  Penn  had  not  been  somebody,  or  done  something,  of 
some  consequence.  As  for  the  rest  of  America,  I  doubt 
if  it  often  comes  so  near  to  Philadelphia  that  it  can  see 
the  statue.  The  last  time  I  went  to  New  York  from  Lon- 
don I  met  on  the  steamer  a  man  from  Michigan  who  had 
obviously  been  but  a  short  time  before  a  man  from  Cork, 
and  who  was  so  keen  to  stop  in  Philadelphia  on  his  way 
West  that  I  might  have  been  astonished  had  I  not  heard 
so  much  of  the  miraculously  rapid  Americanization  of  the 
modern  emigrant.  Most  people  do  not  want  to  stop  in 
Philadelphia  unless  they  have  business  there,  and  he  had 
none,  and  naturally  I  could  not  imagine  any  other  motive 
except  the  desire  to  see  the  town  which  is  of  the  greatest 
historic  importance  in  the  United  States  and  which  still 
possesses  proofs  of  it.  But  the  man  from  Michigan  gave 
me  to  understand,  and  pretty  quick  too,  that  he  did  not 
know  Philadelphia  had  a  history  and  old  buildings  to 
prove  it,  and  what  was  more,  he  did  not  care  if  it  had.  He 
guessed  history  wasn't  in  his  line.  What  he  wanted  was 
to  take  the  next  train  to  Atlantic  City ;  folks  he  knew  had 
been  there  and  said  it  was  great.  And  I  rather  think  this 
is  the  way  most  Americans,  from  America  or  from  Cork, 
feel  about  Philadelphia. 


^ 


CONTRASTS 

VT  BBOAD  STREET  FBOU  "  THB  WALTON ' 


I'  > 


--.TaAaTkioo 


AN  EXPLANATION  11 

IV 

It  is  not  my  affair  to  enlighten  them  or  anybody  else. 
I  have  a  more  personal  object  in  view.  Philadelphia  may 
mean  to  other  people  nothing  at  all — that  is  their  loss; 
I  am  concerned  entirely  with  what  it  means  to  me.  In 
those  wonderful  Eighteen-Nineties,  now  written  about 
with  awe  by  the  younger  generation  as  if  no  less  pre- 
historic than  the  period  of  the  Renaissance,  until  it  makes 
me  feel  a  new  Methusaleh  to  own  that  I  lived  and  worked 
through  them,  we  were  always  being  told  that  art  should 
be  the  artist's  record  of  nature  seen  through  a  tempera- 
ment, criticism  the  critic's  story  of  his  adventures  among 
the  world's  masterpieces,  and  though  I  am  neither  artist 
nor  critic,  though  I  am  not  sure  what  a  temperament  is, 
much  less  if  I  have  one,  still  I  fancy  this  expresses  in  a 
way  the  end  I  have  set  myself  in  writing  about  Philadel- 
phia. For  I  should  like,  if  I  can,  to  record  my  personal 
impressions  of  the  town  I  love  and  to  give  my  adventures 
among  the  beautiful  things,  the  humorous  things,  the 
tragic  things  it  contains  in  more  than  ample  measure.  My 
interest  is  in  my  personal  experiences,  but  these  have  been 
coloured  by  the  history  of  Philadelphia  since  I  have 
dabbled  in  it,  and  have  become  richer  and  more  amusing. 
I  have  learned,  with  age  and  reading  and  travelling,  that 
Philadelphia  as  it  is  cannot  really  be  known  without  some 
knowledge  of  Philadelphia  as  it  was;  also  that  Philadel- 
phia, both  as  it  is  and  as  it  was,  is  worth  knowing.  Ameri- 
cans will  wander  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  to  studv  the 


12  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

psychology — as  they  call  it — of  people  they  never  could 
understand  however  hard  they  tried;  they  will  shut  them- 
selves up  in  a  remote  town  of  Italy  or  Spain  to  master  the 
secrets  of  its  prehistoric  past;  they  will  squander  months 
in  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale  or  the  British  Museum  to 
get  at  the  true  atmosphere  of  Paris  or  London ;  when,  had 
they  only  stopped  their  journey  at  Broad  Street  Station 
in  Philadelphia  or,  if  they  were  Philadelphians,  never 
taken  the  train  out  of  it,  they  could  have  had  all  the  psy- 
chologj--  and  secrets  and  atmosphere  they  could  ask  for, 
with  much  less  trouble  and  expense. 

I  have  never  been  to  any  town  anywhere,  and  I  have 
been  to  many  in  my  time,  that  has  more  decided  character 
than  Philadelphia,  or  to  any  where  this  character  is  more 
difficult  to  understand  if  the  clue  is  not  got  from  the  past. 
For  instance,  people  talk  about  Philadelphia  as  if  its  one 
talent  was  for  sleep,  while  the  truth  is,  taking  the  sum  of 
its  achievements,  no  other  American  town  has  done  so 
much  hard  work,  no  other  has  accomplished  so  much  for 
the  country.  Impressed  as  we  are  by  the  fact,  it  would  be 
impossible  to  account  for  the  reputation  if  it  were  not 
known  that  the  people  who  made  Philadelphia  presented 
the  same  puzzling  contradiction  in  their  own  lives — the 
only  people  who  ever  understood  how  to  be  in  the  world 
and  not  of  it. 

The  usual  alternative  to  not  being  of  the  world  is  to  be 
in  a  cloister  or  to  live  like  a  hermit,  to  accept  a  rule  in 
common    or    to    renounce    social    intercourse.      But    the 


•'  '11.  M 


ARCH  STREET  MEETING  HOUSE 


AN  EXPLANATION  15 

Friends  did  not  have  to  shut  themselves  up  to  conquer 
worklliness,  they  did  not  have  to  renounce  the  world's  work 
and  its  rewards.  For  "  affluence  of  the  world's  goods," 
Isaac  Norris,  writing  from  Philadelphia,  could  felicitate 
Jonathan  Dickinson,  "  knowing  both  thyself  and  dear 
wife  have  hearts  and  souls  fit  to  use  them."  That  was 
better  than  shirking  temptation  in  a  monk's  cell  or  a 
philosopher's  tub.  If  George  Fox  wore  a  leather  suit,  it 
was  because  he  found  it  convenient,  but  William  Penn,  for 
whom  it  would  have  been  highly  inconvenient,  had  no 
scruple  in  dressing  like  other  men  of  his  position  and 
wearing  the  blue  ribbon  of  office.  Nor  because  religion 
w^as  freed  from  all  unessential  ornament,  was  the  house 
stripped  of  comfort  and  luxury,  I  write  about  Friends 
with  hesitation.  I  have  been  married  to  one  now  for  many 
years  and  can  realize  the  better  therefore  that  none  save 
Friends  can  write  of  themselves  with  authority.  But  I 
hope  I  am  right  in  thinking,  as  I  always  have  thought 
since  I  read  Thomas  Elwood's  Memoirs^  that  their  atti- 
tude is  excellently  explained  in  his  account  of  his  first 
visit  to  the  Penningtons  "  after  they  were  become 
Quakers  "  when,  though  he  was  astonished  at  the  new 
gravity  of  their  look  and  behaviour,  he  found  Guli  Spring- 
ett  amusing  herself  in  the  garden  and  the  dinner  "  hand- 
some." For  the  world's  goods  never  being  the  end  they 
were  to  the  World's  People,  Friends  were  as  undisturbed 
by  their  possession  as  by  their  absence  and,  as  a  conse- 
quence, could  meet  and  accept  life,  whether  its  gifts  were 


16  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

wealth  and  power  or  poverty  and  obscurity,  with  the 
serenity  few  other  men  have  found  outside  the  cloister. 
Moreover,  they  could  speak  the  truth,  calling  a  spade  a 
spade,  or  their  enemy  the  scabbed  sheep,  or  smooth  silly 
man,  or  vile  fellow,  or  inhuman  monster,  or  villain  infect- 
ing the  air  with  a  hellish  stench,  he  no  doubt  was,  and 
never  for  a  moment  lose  their  tempers.  This  serenity — 
this  "  still  strength  " — is  as  the  poles  apart  from  the 
phlegmatic,  constitutional  slowness  of  the  Dutch  in  New 
York  or,  on  the  other  hand,  from  the  tranquillity  Henry 
James  traces  in  progi-essive  descent  from  taste,  tradition, 
and  historj%  even  from  the  philosopher's  calm  of  achieved 
indifference,  and  Friends,  having  carried  it  to  perfection 
in  their  own  conduct,  left  it  as  a  legacy  to  their  town. 

The  usual  American  town,  when  it  hustles,  lets  nobody 
overlook  the  fact  that  it  is  hustling.  But  Philadelphia 
has  done  its  work  as  calmly  as  the  Friends  have  done  theirs, 
never  boasting  of  its  prosperity,  never  shouting  its  success 
and  riches  from  the  house-top,  and  its  dignified  serenity 
has  been  mistaken  for  sleep.  Whistler  used  to  say  that  if 
the  General  does  not  tell  the  world  he  has  won  the  battle, 
the  world  will  never  hear  of  it.  The  trouble  with  Phila- 
delphia is  that  it  has  kept  its  triumph  to  itself.  But  we 
have  got  so  far  from  the  old  Friends  that  no  harm  can  be 
done  if  Philadelphians  begin  to  interpret  their  town's 
serenity  to  a  world  capable  of  confusing  it  with  drowsi- 
ness. If  America  is  ready  to  forget,  if  for  long  Philadel- 
phians were  as  ready,  it  is  high  time  we  should  remember 


THE  SCHUYLKILL  SOUTH  FROM  CALLOWHILL  STREET 


AN  EXPLANATION  19 

ourselves  and  remind  America  of  the  services  Philadel- 
phia has  rendered  to  the  country,  and  its  good  taste  in 
rendering  them  with  so  little  fuss  that  all  the  country  has 
done  in  return  is  to  laugh  at  Philadelphia  as  a  back 
number. 


Philadelphians  have  grown  accustomed  to  the  laugh. 
We  have  heard  it  since  we  were  in  our  cradles.  We  are 
used  to  have  other  Americans  come  to  our  town  and, — in 
the  face  of  our  factory  chimneys  smoking  along  the 
Schuylkill  and  our  ship-building  yards  in  full  swing  on 
the  Delaware,  and  our  locomotives  pouring  out  over  the 
world  by  I  do  not  know  how  many  thousands  from  the 
works  in  Broad  Street,  and  our  mills  going  at  full  pressure 
in  the  "  Little  England  "  of  Kensington,  in  Frankford  and 
Germantown, — in  the  face  of  our  busy  schools  and  hos- 
pitals and  academies, — in  the  face  of  our  stores  and  banks 
and  charities, — that  is,  in  the  face  of  our  industry,  our 
learning,  and  our  philanthropy  that  have  given  tips  to  the 
whole  country,— see  only  our  sleep-laden  eyes  and  hear 
only  our  sluggish  snores.  We  know  the  foolish  stories 
they  tell.  We  have  heard  many  more  times  than  we  can 
count  of  the  Bostonian  who  retires  to  Philadelphia  for 
complete  intellectual  rest,  and  the  New  Yorker  who  when 
he  has  a  day  off  comes  to  spend  a  week  in  Philadelphia, 
and  the  Philadelphian  who  goes  to  New  York  to  eat  the 
snails  he  cannot  catch  in  his  own  back-yard.     We  have 


20  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

heard  until  we  have  it  by  heart  that  Philadelphia  is  a 
cemetery,  and  the  road  to  it,  the  Road  to  Yesterday.  We 
are  so  familiar  with  the  venerable  cliche  that  we  can  but 
wonder  at  its  gift  of  eternal  youth.  Never  was  there  a 
jest  that  wore  so  well  with  those  who  make  it.  The  comic 
column  is  rarely  complete  without  it,  and  it  is  forever 
cropping  up  where  least  expected.  In  the  last  American 
novel  I  opened  Philadelphia  was  described  as  hanging  on 
to  the  last  strap  of  the  last  car  to  the  sound  of  Gabriel's 
horn  on  Judgment  Day;  in  the  last  American  magazine 
story  I  read  the  Philadelphia  heroine  by  her  Philadelphia 
calm  conquered  the  cowboys  of  the  west,  as  Friends  of 
old  disarmed  their  judges  in  court.  In  the  general  Ameri- 
canization of  London,  even  the  London  papers  have  seized 
upon  the  slowness  of  Philadelphia  as  a  joke  for  Londoners 
to  roar  at.  Li  Hung  Chang  couldn't  visit  Philadelphia 
without  dozing  through  the  ceremonies  in  his  honour  and 
noting  the  appropriateness  of  it  in  his  diary.  And  so  it 
goes  on,  the  witticism  to-day  apparently  as  fresh  as  it  was 
in  the  Stone  Age  from  which  it  has  come  down  to  us. 

If  Philadelphians  laugh,  that  is  another  matter — 
every  man  has  the  right  to  laugh  at  himself.  But  we  have 
outlived  our  old  affectation  of  indifference  to  our  town, 
I  am  not  sure  that  we  are  not  pushing  our  profession  of 
pride  in  it  too  far  to  the  other  extreme.  I  remember  the 
last  time  I  was  home  I  went  to  a  public  meeting  called  to 
talk  about  the  world's  waterways,  and  no  Philadelphian 
present,  from  the  ISIayor  down,  could  talk  of  anything 


-■i^M' 


FRIENDS'  GRAVEYARD,  GERMANTOWN 


L»e-- 


AN  EXPLANATION  28 

but  Philadelphia  and  its  greatness.  But  whatever  may  be 
our  pose  now,  or  next  year,  or  the  year  after,  there  is 
always  beneath  it  a  substantial  layer  of  affection,  for  we 
cannot  help  knowing,  if  nobody  else  does,  what  Philadel- 
phia is  and  what  Philadelphia  has  done.  Certainly,  it  is  be- 
cause I  know  that  I,  for  one,  would  so  much  rather  be  the 
Philadelphian  I  am,  and  my  ancestors  were  not,  than  any 
other  sort  of  American,  that,  as  I  have  grown  older,  my 
love  for  my  town  has  surprised  me  by  its  depth,  and  makes 
my  confession  of  it  now  seem  half  pleasure,  half  duty. 


CHAPTER  II:   A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA 

I 

IF  I  made  my  first  friendships  from  my  perambulator, 
or  trundling  my  hoop  and  skipping  my  rope,  in 
Rittenhouse  Square,  as  every  Philadelphian  should, 
they  were  interrupted  and  broken  so  soon  that  I  have  no 
memory  of  them. 

It  was  my  fate  to  be  sent  to  boarding-school  before  I 
had  time  to  lay  in  a  store  of  the  associations  that  are  the 
common  property  of  happier  Philadelphians  of  my  genera- 
tion. I  do  not  know  if  I  was  ever  taken,  as  J.  and  other 
privileged  children  were,  to  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital 
on  summer  evenings  to  see  William  Penn  step  down  from 
his  pedestal  when  he  heard  the  clock  strike  six,  or  to  the 
Philadelphia  Library  to  wait  until  Benjamin  Franklin, 
hearing  the  same  summons,  left  his  high  niche  for  a  neigh- 
bouring saloon.  I  cannot  recall  the  firemen's  fights  and 
the  cries  of  negroes  selling  pop-corn  and  ice-cream  through 
the  streets  that  fill  some  Philadelphia  reminiscences  I  have 
read.  I  cannot  say  if  I  ever  went  anywhere  by  the 
omnibus  sleigh  in  winter,  or  to  West  Philadelphia  by  the 
stage  at  any  time  of  the  year.  I  never  coasted  down  the 
hills  of  Germantown,  I  never  skated  on  the  Schuylkill. 
When  my  contemporaries  compare  notes  of  these  and 
many  more  delightful  things  in  the  amazing,  romantic, 

24 


^^ 


I. 


i| 


IN  RITTENHOUSE  SQUARE 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  27 

incredible  Philadelphia  they  grew  up  ii),  it  annoys  me 
to  find  myself  out  of  it  all,  sharing  none  of  their  recollec- 
tions, save  one  and  that  the  most  trivial.  For,  from  the 
vagueness  of  the  remote  past,  no  event  emerges  so  clearly 
as  the  periodical  visit  of  "  Crazy  Norah,"  a  poor,  harm- 
less, half-witted  wanderer,  who  wore  a  man's  hat  and  top 
boots,  with  bits  of  ribbon  scattered  over  her  dress,  and 
who,  on  her  aimless  rounds,  drifted  into  all  the  Philadel- 
phia kitchens  to  the  fearful  joy  of  the  children;  and  my 
memory  may  be  less  of  her  personally  than  of  much  talk 
of  her  helped  by  her  resemblance,  or  so  I  fancied,  to  a 
picture  of  Meg  Merrilies  in  a  collection  of  engravings 
of  Walter  Scott's  heroines  owned  by  an  Uncle,  and  almost 
the  first  book  I  can  remember. 

II 

But  great  as  was  my  loss,  I  fancy  my  memories  of  old 
Philadelphia  gain  in  vividness  for  being  so  few.  One  of 
the  most  vivid  is  of  the  interminable  drive  in  the  slow 
horse-car  which  was  the  longest  part  of  the  journey  to 
and  from  my  Convent  school, — which  is  the  longest  part  of 
any  journey  I  ever  made,  not  to  be  endured  at  the  time 
but  for  the  chanting  over  and  over  to  myself  of  all  the 
odds  and  ends  of  verse  I  had  got  by  heart,  from  the  dramas 
of  Little  Miss  Muffett  and  Little  Jack  Horner  to  Poe's 
Bells  and  Tennyson's  Lady  of  Shalott — but  in  memory  a 
drive  to  be  rejoiced  in,  for  nothing  could  have  been  more 
characteristic  of  Philadelphia  as  it  was  then.     The  Con- 


28  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

vent  was  in  Torresdale  on  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  and 
the  Pennsylvania  Depot — Philadelphia  had  as  yet  no 
Stations  and  Terminals — was  in  the  distant,  unknown 
quarter  of  Frankford.  I  believe  it  is  used  as  a  freight 
station  now  and  I  have  sometimes  thought  that,  for  senti- 
ment's sake,  I  should  like  to  make  a  pilgrimage  to  it  over 
the  once  well-travelled  road.  But  the  modern  trolley  has 
deserted  the  straight  course  of  the  unadventurous  horse- 
car  of  my  day  and  I  doubt  if  ever  again  I  could  find  my 
way  back.  The  old  horse-car  went,  without  turn  or  twist, 
along  Third  Street.  I  started  from  the  corner  of  Spruce, 
having  got  as  far  as  that  by  the  slower,  more  infrequent 
Spruce  Street  car,  and  after  I  had  passed  the  fine  old 
houses  where  Philadelphians — not  aliens — lived,  a  good 
part  of  the  route  lay  through  a  busy  business  section.  But 
there  has  stayed  with  me  as  my  chief  impression  of  the 
endless  street  a  sense  of  eternal  calm.  No  matter  how 
much  solid  work  was  being  done,  no  matter  how  many 
fortunes  were  being  made  and  unmade,  it  was  always 
placid  on  the  surface,  uneventful  and  unruffled.  The  car, 
jingling  along  in  leisurely  fashion,  was  the  one  sign  of 
animation. 

Or  often,  in  spring  and  summer,  I  went  by  boat,  from 
— so  false  is  memory — I  cannot  say  what  wharf,  up  the 
Delaware.  This  was  a  pleasanter  journey  and  every  bit 
as  leisurely  and  as  characteristic  in  its  way  of  Philadel- 
phia life.  For  though  I  might  catch  the  early  afternoon 
boat,  it  was  sure  to  be  full  of  business  men  returning 


^ 


vf.'  -^H, 


h 


•■v 


r 


THE  PKNNSVLVAMA  HOSPITAL  KKO.M  THK  (iROUNDS 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  31 

from  their  offices  to  their  houses  on  the  river.  Philadel- 
phians  did  not  wait  for  the  JMain  Line  to  be  invented  to 
settle  in  the  suburbs.  They  have  always  had  a  fancy  for 
the  near  country  ever  since  Penn  lived  in  state  at  Penns- 
bury,  and  Logan  at  Stenton;  ever  since  Bartram  planted 
his  garden  on  the  banks  of  the  Schuylkill,  and  Arnold 
brought  Peggy  Shippen  as  his  bride  to  Mount  Pleasant; 
ever  since  all  the  Colonial  country  houses  we  are  so  proud 
of  were  built.  I  have  the  haziest  memory  of  the  places 
where  the  boat  stopped  between  Philadelphia  and  Torres- 
dale  and  of  the  people  who  got  out  there.  But  I  cannot 
help  remembering  Torresdale  for  it  was  as  prominent  a 
stopping-place  in  my  journey  through  youth  as  it  is  in  the 
journey  up  the  Delaware.  The  Convent  was  my  home 
for  years,  and  I  had  many  friends  in  the  houses  dowTi  by 
the  riverside  and  scattered  over  the  near  country.  Their 
names  are  among  the  most  familiar  in  my  youthful  recol- 
lections: the  JNIacalisters,  the  Grants — one  of  my  brothers 
named  after  the  father — the  Hopkins — another  of  my 
brothers  marrying  in  the  family — the  Fishers,  Keatings, 
Steadmans,  Kings,  Bories,  Whelans.  It  was  not  often  I 
could  go  or  come  without  meeting  somebody  I  knew  on 
board.  I  am  a  cockney  myself,  I  love  the  town,  but  I  can 
understand  that  Philadelphians  whose  homes  were  in  the 
country,  especially  if  that  country  lay  along  the  shores 
of  the  Delaware,  liked  to  get  back  early  enough  to  profit 
by  it;  that,  busy  and  full  of  affairs  as  they  might  be,  they 
not  only  liked  but  managed  to,  shows  how  far  hustling 


32  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

was  from  the  old  Philadelphia  scheme  of  things.  Nowa- 
days the  motor  brings  the  country  into  town  and  town  into 
the  country.  But  the  miles  between  town  and  country 
were  then  lengthened  into  leagues  by  the  leisurely  boat  and 
the  leisurely  horse-car  which,  as  I  look  back,  seem  to  set  the 
pace  of  life  in  Philadelphia  when  I  was  young. 

Ill 

At  first  my  holidays  were  spent  mostly  at  the  Convent. 
ISIy  Father,  with  the  young  widower's  embarrassment 
when  confronted  by  his  motherless  children,  solved  the 
problem  the  existence  of  my  Sister  and  myself  was  to  him 
by  putting  us  where  he  knew  we  were  safe  and  well  out  of 
his  way.  I  do  not  blame  him.  What  is  a  man  to  do  when 
he  finds  himself  with  two  little  girls  on  his  clumsy  mascu- 
line hands  ^  But  the  result  was  he  had  no  house  of  his 
own  to  bring  us  to  when  the  other  girls  hurried  joyfully 
home  at  Cln-istmas  and  Easter  and  for  the  long  summer 
holiday.  It  hurt  as  I  used  to  watch  them  walking  briskly 
down  the  long  path  on  the  way  to  the  station.  And  yet, 
I  scored  in  the  end,  for  Philadelphia  was  the  more  marvel- 
lous to  me,  visiting  it  rarely,  than  it  could  have  been  to 
children  to  whom  it  was  an  everyday  affair. 

For  years  my  Grandfather's  house  was  the  scene  of 
the  occasional  visit.  He  lived  in  Spruce  Street  above 
Eleventh — the  typical  Philadelphia  Street,  straight  and 
narrow,  on  either  side  rows  of  red  brick  houses,  each  with 
white    marble    steps,    white    shutters    below    and    green 


'ELEVENTH  AND  SPRUCE' 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  35 

shutters  above,  and  along  the  red  brick  pavement  rows  of 
trees  which  made  Philadelphia  the  green  country  town 
of  Penn's  desire,  but  the  Philadelphian's  life  a  burden  in 
the  springtime  before  the  coming  of  the  sparrows.  Phila- 
delphia, as  I  think  of  it  in  the  old  days  at  the  season  when 
the  leaves  were  growing  green,  is  always  heavy  with  the 
odour  of  the  evil-smelling  ailantus  and  full  of  measuring 
worms  falling  upon  me  from  every  tree.  JNIy  fear  of 
"  Crazy  Norali  "  is  hardly  less  clear  in  my  early  memories 
than  the  terror  these  worms  were  to  the  dear  fragile  little 
Aunt  who  had  cared  for  me  in  my  first  motherless  years, 
and  who  still,  during  my  holidays,  kept  a  watchful  eye  on 
me  to  see  that  I  put  my  "  gums  "  on  if  I  went  out  in  the 
rain  and  that  I  had  the  money  in  my  pocket  to  stop  at 
Dexter's  for  a  plate  of  ice-cream.  I  can  recall  as  if  it 
were  yesterday,  her  shrieks  one  Easter  Sunday  when  she 
came  home  from  church  and  found  a  green  horror  on  her 
new  spring  bonnet  and  another  on  her  petticoat,  and  her 
miserable  certainty  all  through  the  early  Sunday  dinner 
that  many  more  were  crawling  over  her  somewhere.  But, 
indeed,  the  Philadelphians  of  to-day  can  never  know  from 
what  loathsome  creatures  the  sparrows  have  delivered 
them. 

INIy  Grandfather's  house  was  as  typical  as  the  street — 
one  of  the  quite  modest  four-story  brick  houses  that  were 
thought  unseemly  sky-scrapers  and  fire-traps  when  they 
were  first  built  in  Philadelphia.  I  can  never  go  by  the  old 
house  of  many  memories — for  sale,  alas!  the  last  time  I 


36  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

passed  and  still  for  sale  according  to  the  last  news  to 
reach  me  even  as  I  correct  my  proofs — without  seeing 
myself  as  I  used  to  be,  arriving  from  the  Convent,  small, 
plain,  unbecomingly  dressed  and  conscious  of  it,  with  my 
pretty,  always-becomingly-dressed  because  nothing  was 
unbecoming  to  her,  not-in-the-least-shy  Sister,  both  stand- 
ing in  the  vestibule  between  the  inevitable  Philadelphia 
two  front  doors,  the  outer  one  as  inevitably  open  all  day 
long.  And  I  see  myself,  when,  in  answer  to  our  ring,  the 
servant  had  opened  the  inner  one  as  well,  entering  in  a 
fresh  access  of  shyness  the  wide  lofty  hall,  with  the  front 
and  back  parlours  to  the  right;  Philadelphians  had  no 
drawing-rooms  then  but  were  content  with  parlours,  as 
Penn  had  been  who  knew  them  by  no  other  name.  Com- 
pared to  the  rich  Philadelphian's  house  to-day,  my  Grand- 
father's looks  very  unpretending,  but  when  houses  like  it, 
with  two  big  parlours  separated  by  folding  doors,  first 
became  the  fashion  in  Philadelphia,  they  passed  for  palaces 
with  Philadelphians  who  disapproved  of  display,  and 
the  "  tradesmen  "  living  soberly  in  them  were  rebuked  for 
aspiring  to  the  luxury  of  princes.  I  cannot  imagine  why, 
for  the  old  Colonial  houses  are,  many  of  them,  as  lofty 
and  more  spacious,  though  it  was  the  simple  spaciousness 
of  my  Grandfather's  and  the  loftiness  of  its  ceilings  that 
gave  it  charm. 

^ly  Grandfather's  two  parlours,  big  as  they  were, 
would  strike  nobody  to-day  as  palatial.  It  needs  the 
glamour  time  throws  over  them  for  me  to  discover  princely 


DRAWING  ROOM  AT  CLIVEDEN 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  39 

luxury  in  the  rosewood  and  reps  masterpieces  of  a  de- 
plorable period  with  which  they  were  furnished,  or  in 
their  decoration  of  beaded  cushions  and  worsted-work 
mats  and  tidies,  the  lavish  gifts  of  a  devoted  family.  But 
I  cannot  remember  the  parlours  and  forget  the  respect 
with  which  they  once  inspired  me.  I  own  to  a  lingering 
affection  for  their  crowning  touch  of  ugliness,  an  ottoman 
with  a  top  of  the  fashionable  Berlin  work  of  the  day — a 
white  arum  lily,  done  by  the  superior  talent  of  the  fancy 
store,  on  a  red  ground  filled  in  by  the  industrious  giver. 
It  stood  between  the  two  front  windows,  so  that  we  might 
have  the  additional  rapture  of  seeing  it  a  second  time  in  the 
mirror  which  hung  behind  it.  Opposite,  between  the  two 
windows  of  the  back  parlour,  was  a  "  Rogers  Group  "  on 
a  blue  stand;  and  a  replica,  with  variations,  of  both  the 
ottoman  and  the  "  Rogers  Group  "  could  have  been  found 
in  every  other  Philadelphia  front  and  back  parlour.  I 
recall  also  the  three  or  four  family  portraits  which  I  held 
in  tremendous  awe,  however  I  may  feel  about  them  now; 
and  the  immensely  high  vases,  unique  creations  that  could 
not  possibly  have  been  designed  for  any  purpose  save  to 
ornament  the  Philadelphia  mantelpiece;  and  the  trans- 
parent lamp-shade,  decorated  with  pictures  of  cats  and 
children  and  landscapes,  that  at  night,  when  the  gas  was 
lit,  helped  to  keep  me  awake  until  I  could  escape  to  bed; 
and  the  lustre  chandeliers  hanging  from  the  ceiling — what 
joy  when  one  of  the  long  prisms  came  loose  and  I  could 
capture  it  and,  looking  through  it,  walk  across  the  parlours 


40  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

and  up  the  stairs  straight  into  the  splendid  dangers  of 
Rainbow  Land! 

I  had  no  time  for  these  splendours  on  my  arrival,  nor, 
fortunately  for  me,  was  I  left  long  to  the  tortures  of  my 
shyness.  At  the  end  of  the  hall,  facing  me,  was  the  wide 
flight  of  stairs  leading  to  the  upper  stories,  and  on  the  first 
landing,  at  their  turning  just  where  a  few  more  steps 
led  beyond  into  the  back-building  dining-room,  my  Grand- 
mother, in  her  white  cap  and  purple  ribbons,  stood  wait- 
ing. In  my  memory  she  and  that  landing  are  inseparable. 
Whenever  the  door  bell  rang,  she  was  out  there  at  the  first 
sound,  ready  to  say  "  Come  right  up,  my  dear!  "  to  which- 
ever one  of  her  innumerable  progeny  it  might  be.  To  her 
right,  filling  an  ample  space  in  the  windings  of  the  back 
stairs,  was  the  inexhaustible  pantry  which  I  knew,  as  well 
as  she,  we  should  presently  visit  together.  Though  there 
could  not  have  been  in  Philadelphia  or  anywhere  quite 
such  another  Grandmother,  even  if  most  Philadelphians 
feel  precisely  the  same  way  about  theirs,  she  was  typical 
too,  like  the  house  and  the  street.  She  belonged  to  the 
generation  of  Philadelphia  women  who  took  to  old  age 
almost  as  soon  as  they  were  mothers,  put  on  caps  and  large 
easy  shoes,  invented  an  elderly  dress  from  which  they 
never  deviated  for  the  rest  of  their  lives,  except  to  ex- 
change cashmere  for  silk,  the  everyday  cap  for  one  of 
fine  lace  and  wider  ribbons,  on  occasions  of  ceremon)^  and 
who  as  promptly  forgot  the  world  outside  of  their  house- 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  41 

hold  and  their  family.  I  do  not  believe  my  Grandmother 
had  an  interest  in  anybody  except  her  children,  or  in  any- 
thing except  their  affairs;  though  this  did  not  mean  that 
she  gave  up  society  when  it  was  to  their  advantage  that  she 
should  not.  In  her  stiff  silks  and  costly  caps,  she  pre- 
sided at  every  dinner,  reception,  and  party  given  at  home, 
as  conscientiously  as,  in  her  sables  and  demure  velvet 
bonnet,  she  made  and  returned  calls  in  the  season. 

]My  other  memories  are  of  comfortable,  spacious  rooms, 
good,  solid,  old-fashioned  furniture,  a  few  more  old  and 
some  better-forgotten  new  famil}'  portraits  on  the  walls, 
the  engraving  of  Gilbert  Stuart's  Washington  over  the 
dining-room  mantelpiece,  the  sofa  or  couch  in  almost  every 
room  for  the  Philadelphia  nap  before  dinner,  the  two 
cheerful  kitchens  where,  if  the  servants  were  amiable,  I 
sometimes  played,  and,  above  all,  the  most  enchanting 
back-yard  that  ever  was  or  could  be — we  were  not  so 
elegant  in  those  days  as  to  call  it  a  garden. 

IV 

Since  it  has  been  the  fashion  to  revive  everything  old 
in  Philadelphia,  most  Philadelphians  are  not  hajjjjy  until 
they  have  their  garden,  as  their  forefathers  had,  and  very 
charming  they  often  make  it  in  the  suburbs.  But  in  town 
my  admiration  has  been  asked  for  gardens  that  would  have 
been  lost  in  my  Grandfather's  back-yard,  and  for  a  few- 
meagre  plants  springing  up  about  a  cold  paved  square 


42  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

that  would  have  been  condemned  as  weeds  in  his  luxuriant 
flower  beds. 

The  kindly  magnifying  glasses  of  memory  cannot  con- 
vert the  Spruce  Street  yard  into  a  rival  of  Edward  Ship- 
pen's  garden  in  Second  Street  where  the  old  chronicles  say 
there  were  orchards  and  a  herd  of  deer,  or  of  Bartram's 
with  its  trees  and  plants  collected  from  far  and  wide,  or 
of  any  of  the  old  Philadelphia  gardens  in  the  days  when 
in  Philadelphia  no  house,  no  public  building,  almost  no 
church,  could  exist  without  a  green  space  and  great  trees 
and  many  flowers  about  it,  and  when  Philadelphians  loved 
their  gardens  so  well,  and  hated  so  to  leave  them,  that  there 
is  the  story  of  one  at  least  who  came  back  after  death  to 
haunt  the  shady  walks  and  fragrant  lawns  that  were  fairer 
to  her  than  the  fairest  Elysian  Fields  in  the  land  beyond 
the  grave.  IVIuch  of  the  old  beauty  had  gone  before  I  was 
born,  much  was  going  as  I  grew  from  childhood  to  youth. 
My  L^ncle,  Charles  Godfrey  Leland,  has  described  the 
Philadelphia  garden  of  his  early  years,  "  with  vines  twined 
over  arbours,  where  the  magnolia,  honeysuckle  and  rose 
spread  rich  perfume  of  summer  nights,  and  where  the 
humming  bird  rested,  and  scarlet  tanager,  or  oriole,  with 
the  yellow  and  blue  bird  flitted  in  sunshine  or  in  shade." 
Though  I  go  back  to  days  before  the  sparrows  had  driven 
away  not  only  the  worms  but  all  others  of  their  own  race, 
I  recall  no  orioles  and  scarlet  tanagers,  no  yellow  and 
blue  birds.  Philadelphia's  one  magnolia  tree  stood  in 
front  of  the  old  Dundas  house  at  Broad  and  Walnut. 


■■*i. 


OLD  SWEDES '  FROM  THE  CHURCHYARD 


that ' 


aH/YMOMOH  •  .fTir  t/iiH<   >'Aavn?.<\M 


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/7-<.m    ■-        Jf^r      ^     ■■'An  '.>i4<2ii      ^  ,i^ 


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A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  43 

All  the  same,  my  Grandfather's  was  a  back-yard  of 
encliantment.  A  narrow  brick-paved  path  led  past  the 
kitchens ;  on  one  side,  close  to  the  wall  dividing  my  Grand- 
father's yard  from  the  next  door  neighbour's,  was  a  border 
of  roses  and  Johnny- jump-ups  and  shrubs — the  shrubs 
my  Grandmother  used  to  pick  for  me,  crush  a  little  in  her 
fingers,  and  tie  up  in  a  corner  of  my  handkerchief,  which 
was  the  Philadelphia  way — the  most  effective  way  that 
ever  was — to  make  them  give  out  their  sweetness.  Be- 
yond the  kitchens,  where  the  yard  broadened  into  a  large 
open  space,  the  path  enclosed,  with  a  wider  border  of 
roses,  two  big  grass  plots  which  were  shaded  by  fruit 
trees,  all  pink  and  white  in  the  springtime.  Wistaria 
hung  in  purple  showers  over  the  high  walls.  I  am  sure 
lilacs  bloomed  at  the  kitchen  door,  and  a  vine  of  Isabella 
grapes — the  very  name  has  an  old  Philadelphia  flavour 
and  fragrance — covered  the  verandah  that  ran  across  the 
entire  second  story  of  the  back-building.  If  sometimes 
this  delectable  back-yard  was  cold  and  bare,  in  my 
memory  it  is  more  apt  to  be  sweet  and  gay  with  roses, 
shrubs  and  Johnny- jump-ups, — simimer  and  its  pleasures 
oftener  waiting  on  me  there:  probably  because  my  visits 
to  my  Grandfather's  were  more  frequent  in  the  summer 
time.  But  I  have  vague  memories  of  winter  days,  when 
the  rose  bushes  were  done  up  in  straw,  and  wooden  steps 
covered  the  marble  in  front,  and  ashes  were  strewn  over 
the  icy  pavement,  and  snow  was  piled  waist-high  in  the 
gutter. 


44  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


From  the  verandah  there  was  a  pleasant  vista,  up  and 
down,  of  the  same  back-yards  and  the  same  back  buildings, 
just  as  from  the  front  windows  there  was  a  pleasant  vista, 
up  and  down,  of  the  same  red-brick  fronts,  the  same  white 
marble  steps,  the  same  white  and  green  shutters, — only 
one  house  daring  upon  originality,  and  this  was  Bennett's, 
the  ready-made  clothes  man,  whose  unusually  large  garden 
filled  the  opposite  corner  of  Eleventh  and  Spruce  with 
big  country-like  trees  over  to  which  I  looked  from  my 
bedroom  window.  As  a  child,  instinctively  I  got  to  know 
that  inside  every  house,  within  sight  and  beyond,  I  would 
find  the  same  front  and  back  parlours,  the  same  back- 
building  dining-room,  the  same  number  of  bedrooms,  the 
same  engraving  of  George  ^Vashington  over  the  dining- 
room  mantelpiece,  the  same  big  red  cedar  chest  in  the 
third  story  hall  and,  in  summer,  the  same  parlours  turned 
into  cool  grey  cellars  with  the  same  matting  on  the  floor, 
the  same  linen  covers  on  the  chairs,  the  same  curtainless 
windows  and  carefully  closed  shutters,  the  same  white 
gauze  over  mirrors  and  chandeliers — to  light  upon  an  item 
for  gauze  "  to  cover  pictures  and  glass  "  in  Washington's 
household  accounts  while  he  lived  in  Philadelphia  is  one 
of  the  things  it  is  worth  searching  the  old  archives  for. 

Instinctively,  I  got  to  know  too  that,  in  every  one  of 
these  well-regulated  interiors  where  there  was  a  little  girl, 
she  must,  like  me,  be  striving  to  be  neither  seen  nor  heard 


m 


BACK-YARDS,  ST.  PETERS  SPIRE  IN  THE  DISTANCE 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  47 

all  the  long  morning,  and  sitting  primly  at  the  front  win- 
dow all  the  long  afternoon,  and  that,  if  she  ever  played  at 
home  it  was,  like  me,  with  measured  steps  and  modulated 
voice:  at  all  times  cultivating  the  calm  of  maimer  ex- 
pected of  her  when  she,  in  her  turn,  would  have  just  such  a 
red  brick  house  and  just  such  a  delectable  back-yard  of 
her  own.  Thus,  while  the  long  months  at  the  Convent 
kept  me  busy  cultivating  every  spiritual  grace,  during  the 
occasional  holiday  at  Eleventh  and  Spruce  I  was  well 
drilled  in  the  Philadelphia  virtues. 


CHAPTER   III: 
PHILADELPHIA 


A  CHILD   IN 
-CONTINUED 


NATL^RALLY,  I  could  not  live  in  Spruce  Street 
and  not  believe,  as  every  Philadelphian  should 
and  once  did,  that  no  other  kind  of  a  house  ex- 
cept the  Spruce  Street  house  was  fit  for  a  Philadelphian  to 
live  in.  The  Philadelphian,  from  infancy,  was  convinced 
by  his  surroundings  and  bringing-up  that  there  was  but 
one  way  of  doing  things  decently  and  respectably  and  that 
was  the  Philadelphia  way,  nor  can  my  prolonged  exile 
relieve  me  from  the  sense  of  crime  at  times  when  I  catch 
myself  doing  things  not  just  as  Philadelphians  used  to 
do  them. 

I  was  safe  from  any  such  crime  in  my  Grandfather's 
house.  All  Philadelphia  might  have  been  let  in  without 
fear.  Had  skeletons  been  concealed  in  the  capacious  cup- 
boards, they  would  have  been  of  the  approved  Philadelphia 
pattern.  ]My  Grandfather  was  not  at  all  of  jNIontaigne's 
opinion  that  order  in  the  management  of  life  is  sottish, 
but  looked  upon  it  rather  as  "  Heaven's  first  law."  His 
day's  programme  was  the  same  as  in  every  red  brick  house 
with  white  marble  steps  and  a  back-yard  full  of  roses  and 
shrubs  and  Johnny- jump-ups.  Everything  at  Eleventh 
and  Spruce  was  done  according  to  the  same  Philadelphia 

48 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  49 

rules  at  the  same  hour,  from  the  washing  of  the  family  linen 
on  jNIonday,  when  Sunday's  beef  was  eaten  cold  for  dinner, 
to  the  washing  of  the  front  on  Saturday  morning,  when 
Philadelphia  streets  from  end  to  end  were  all  mops  and 
maids,  rivers  and  lakes. 

When  my  Grandfather,  with  his  family  on  their  knees 
around  him,  began  the  day  by  reading  morning  prayers 
in  the  back-building  dining-room,  he  could  have  had  the 
satisfaction  of  knowing  that  every  other  Philadelphia 
head  of  a  family  was  engaged  in  the  same  edifying  duty, 
but  I  hope,  for  every  other  Philadelphia  family's  sake, 
with  a  trifle  less  awe-inspiring  solemnity.  After  being 
present  once  at  my  Grandfather's  prayers,  nobody  needed 
to  be  assured  that  life  was  earnest. 

He  did  not  shed  his  solemnity  w^hen  he  rose  from  his 
knees,  nor  when  he  had  finished  his  breakfast  of  scrapple 
and  buckwheat  cakes  and  left  the  breakfast  table.  He 
was  as  solemn  in  his  progress  through  the  streets  to  the 
Philadelphia  Bank,  at  Fourth  and  Chestnut,  of  which 
he  was  President,  and  having  said  so  much  perhaps  I 
might  as  well  add  his  name,  Thomas  Robins,  for  in  his 
day  he  was  widely  known  and  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  remem- 
ber, as  widely  appreciated  both  in  and  out  of  Philadelphia. 
His  clothes  were  always  of  the  most  admirable  cut  and 
fit  and  of  a  fashion  becoming  to  his  years,  he  carried  a  sub- 
stantial cane  w^ith  a  gold  top,  his  stock  was  never  laid  aside 
for  a  frivolous  modern  cravat,  his  silk  hat  was  as  indis- 
pensable, and  his  slow  walk  had  a  dignity  royalty  might 


50  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

have  envied.  He  was  a  handsome  old  man  and  a  notice- 
able figure  even  in  Philadelphia  streets  at  the  hour  when 
John  Welsh  from  the  corner,  and  Biddies  and  Cad- 
walladers  and  Whartons  and  Peppers  and  Lewises  and  a 
host  of  other  handsome  old  Philadelphians  with  good 
Philadelphia  names  from  the  near  neighborhood,  were 
starting  downtown  in  clothes  as  irreproachable  and  with  a 
gait  no  less  dignified.  The  foreigner's  idea  of  the  Ameri- 
can is  of  a  slouchy,  free-and-easy  man  for  ever  cracking 
jokes.  But  slouchiness  and  jokes  had  no  place  in  the 
dictionary  or  the  deportment  of  my  Grandfather  and  his 
contemporaries,  at  a  period  when  Philadelphia  supplied 
men  like  John  Welsh  for  its  country  to  send  as  represen- 
tatives abroad  and  there  carry  on  the  traditions  of  Frank- 
lin and  John  Adams  and  Jefferson.  ]My  Father — Edward 
Robins — inherited  more  than  his  share  of  this  old-fashioned 
Philadelphia  manner,  making  a  ceremony  of  the  morning 
walk  to  his  office  and  the  Sunday  walk  to  church.  But  it 
has  been  lost  by  younger  generations,  more's  the  pity.  In 
memory  I  would  not  have  my  Grandfather  a  shade  less 
solemn,  though  at  the  time  his  solemnity  put  me  on  any- 
thing but  easy  terms  with  him. 

II 

The  respectful  bang  of  the  front  door  upon  my  Grand- 
father's dignified  back  after  breakfast  was  the  signal  for 
the  family  to  relax.  The  cloth  was  at  once  cleared,  my 
Grandmother    and    my    Aunts — like    all    Philadelphia 


m;^^ 


^■^^■"/\- 


^>«4, 


:.) 


•/^V;^V 


INDEPENDENCE  SQUARE  AND  THE  STATE  HOUSE 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  53 

mothers  and  daughters — brought  their  work-baskets  into 
the  dining-room  and  sat  and  gossiped  there  until  it  was 
time  for  my  Grandmother  to  go  and  see  the  butcher  and 
the  provision  dealer,  or  for  my  Aunts  to  make  those 
formal  calls  for  which  the  morning  then  was  the  un- 
pardonable hoin\ 

It  seems  to  me,  in  looking  back,  as  if  my  Grand- 
mother could  never  have  gone  out  of  the  house  except  on 
an  errand  to  the  provision  man,  such  an  important  part 
did  it  play  in  her  daily  round  of  duties.  She  never  went 
to  market.  That  was  not  the  Philadelphia  woman's  busi- 
ness, it  was  the  Philadelphia  man's.  My  Grandfather,  at 
the  time  of  which  I  write,  must  have  grown  too  old  for  the 
task,  which  was  no  light  one,  for  it  meant  getting  up  at 
unholy  hours  every  Wednesday  and  every  Saturday,  leav- 
ing the  rest  of  the  family  in  their  comfortable  beds,  and 
being  back  again  in  time  for  prayers  and  eight  o'clock 
breakfast.  I  cannot  say  how  this  division  of  daily  labour 
was  brought  about.  The  century  before,  a  short  time  as 
things  go  in  Philadelphia,  it  was  the  other  way  round  and 
the  young  Philadelphia  woman  at  her  marketing  was  one 
of  the  sights  strangers  in  the  town  were  taken  to  see.  But 
in  my  time  it  w^as  so  much  the  man's  right  that  as  a  child 
I  believed  there  was  something  essentially  masculine  in 
going  to  market,  just  as  there  was  in  making  the  mayon- 
naise for  the  salad  at  dinner.  A  Philadelphia  man  valued 
his  salad  too  highly  to  trust  its  preparation  to  a  woman. 
It  was  almost  a  shock  to  me  when  my  Father  allowed  my 


54 


OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


motherly  little  Aunt  to  relieve  him  of  the  responsibility  in 
the  Spruce  Street  house.  And  later  on,  when  he  re-married 
and  again  lived  in  a  house  of  his  own,  and  my  Step- 
Mother  made  a  mayonnaise  quite  equal  to  his  or  to  any 
mere  man's,  not  even  to  her  would  he  shift  the  early  market- 
ing,— his  presence  in  the  Twelfth  Street  JMarket  as  essen- 
tial on  Wednesday  and  Saturday  mornings  as  in  the  Stock 
Exchange  every  day — and  his  conscientiousness  was  the 
more  astonishing  as  his  genius  was  by  no  means  for 
domesticity,  Philadelphia  women  respected  man's  duties 
and  rights  in  domestic,  as  in  all,  matters.  I  remember 
an  elderly  Philadelphian,  who  was  stopping  at  Blos- 
som's Hotel  in  Chester,  where  all  Americans  thirty  years 
ago  began  their  English  tour,  telling  me  the  many  sauces 
on  the  side  table  had  looked  so  good  she  would  have  liked 
to  try  them  and,  on  my  asking  her  why  in  the  world  she 
had  not,  saying  they  had  not  been  offered  to  her  and  she 
thought  perhaps  they  were  for  the  gentlemen.  Only  a 
Philadelphian  among  Americans  could  have  given  that 
answer. 

Towards  three  o'clock  in  the  Spruce  Street  house,  my 
Grandmother  would  be  found,  her  cap  carefully  removed, 
stretched  full-length  upon  the  sofa  in  the  dining-room. 
The  picture  would  not  be  complete  if  I  left  out  my 
Father's  rage  because  the  dining-room  was  used  for  her 
before-dinner  nap  as  for  almost  every  purpose  of  domestic 
life  by  the  women  of  the  family.  I  have  often  wondered 
where  he  got  such  an  un-Philadelphia  idea.     In  every 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELrillA  55 

house  where  there  was  a  Graiuhnother,  she  was  taking  her 
nap  at  the  same  hour  on  the  same  sofa  in  the  same  dining- 
room.  I  could  never  see  the  harm.  It  was  the  most  com- 
fortable room  in  the  house,  without  the  isolation  of  the  bed- 
room or  the  formality  of  the  parlours. 

At  four,  my  Grandfather  returned  from  his  day's 
work,  the  family  re-assembled,  holding  him  in  sufficient 
awe  never  to  be  late,  and  dinner  was  served.  The  hour 
was  part  of  the  leisurely  life  of  Philadelphia  as  ordered 
in  Spruce  Street.  Philadelphians  had  dined  at  four  dur- 
ing a  himdred  years  and  more,  and  my  Grandfather,  who 
rarely  condescended  to  the  frivolity  of  change,  continued 
to  dine  at  four,  as  he  continued  to  wear  a  stock,  until  the 
end  of  his  life.  It  was  no  doubt  because  of  the  contrast 
with  Convent  fare  that  the  dinner  in  my  recollection  re- 
mains the  most  wonderful  and  elaborate  I  have  ever  eaten, 
though  I  rack  my  brains  in  vain  to  recall  any  of  its  special 
features  except  the  figs  and  prunes  on  the  high  dessert 
dishes,  altogether  the  most  luscious  figs  and  prunes  ever 
gi"own  and  dried,  and  the  decanter  at  my  Grandfather's 
place  from  which  he  dropped  into  his  glass  the  few  drops 
of  brandy  he  drank  with  his  water  while  everybody  else 
drank  their  water  midiluted.  When  friends  came  to 
dinner,  I  recall  also  the  Philadelphia  decanter  of  ISIadeira, 
though  otherwise  no  greater  ceremony.  Dinner  was  al- 
ways as  solemn  an  affair  in  my  Grandfather's  house  as 
morning  prayers  or  any  act  of  daily  life  over  which  he 
presided,  the  whole  house,  at  all  times  when  he  left  it. 


56  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

relapsing  into  dressing-gown  and  slippered  ease  after  the 
full-dress  decorum  his  presence  required  of  it. 

The  eight  o'clock  tea  is  a  more  definite  function  in  my 
memory,  perhaps  because  the  hours  of  waiting  for  it  crept 
by  so  slowly.  After  dinner,  the  Aunts,  my  Father,  the  one 
Uncle  who  lived  at  home,  vanished  I  never  knew  where, 
though  no  doubt  Philadelphia  supplied  some  amusement 
or  occupation  for  the  forlorn  wreck  four  o'clock  dinner 
made  of  the  afternoon.  But  the  interval  was  spent  by 
my  Grandfather  and  Grandmother  at  one  of  the  front 
parlour  windows,  the  old-fashioned  Philadelphia  afghan 
over  their  knees,  their  hands  folded,  while  I,  alone,  my 
Sister  having  had  the  independence  to  vanish  with  the 
grown-ups,  sat  at  the  other,  not  daring  to  break  the 
silence  in  which  thev  looked  out  into  the  drowsy  street  for 
the  people  who  seldom  came  and  the  events  that  never 
happened;  nothing  disturbing  the  calm  of  Spruce  Street 
save  the  Sunday  afternoon  invasion  of  the  colored  people 
in  their  Sunday  clothes  from  every  near  alley.  It  gives 
me  a  pang  now  to  pass  and  see  the  window  empty  that 
once  was  always  filled,  in  the  hour  before  twilight,  by 
those  two  dear  grey  heads. 

Ill 

As  I  grew  a  little  older,  I  had  the  courage  to  bring  a 
book  to  the  window.  It  was  there  I  read  The  Lamplighter 
which  I  confuse  now  with  the  memory  of  our  own  lamp- 


CHRIST  CHURCH  INTERIOR 


T^ 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  59 

lighter  making  liis  rounds;  and  The  Initials  witli  a  haughty 
Hilda  for  heroine — she  must  have  been  haughty  for  all 
real  heroines  then  were;  and  Queechy  and  The  Wide,  Wide 
World  and  Faith  Gartnet/s  Girlhood,  against  whose  senti- 
ment I  am  glad  to  say  I  revolted.     And  mixed  up  with 
these  were  Mrs.  Southworth's  Lost  Heiress  and  the  anony- 
mous Koutledge,  light  books  for  whose  presence  I  cannot 
account  in  my  Grandfather's  serious  house.     Does  any- 
body read  Roiitledge  now?    Has  anybody  now  ever  heard 
of  it?     What  trash  it  was,  but,  after  the  improving  ro- 
mances with  a  religious  moral  of  the  Convent  Library, 
after  Wiseman's  edifying  Fabiola  and  Xewman's  scholarly 
— beyond  my  years — Callista,  how  I  revelled  in  it,  with 
what    a    choking   throat    I    galloped    through   the   love- 
sick chapters!     I  could  recite  pages  of  it  to  myself  to 
relieve  the  dreariness  of  those  long  drives  in  the  Third 
Street  car,  or  the  long  waiting  in  the  dreary  station.     To 
this  day  I  remember  the  last  sentence — "  with  his  arm 
around  my  waist  and  my  face  hidden  on  his  shoulder,  I 
told  him  of  the  love,  folly  and  pride  that  had  so  long  kept 
me  from  him."     Could  Queechy,  could  Faith  Gartney's 
Girlhood  have  been  more  sentimental  than  that?     I  dare 
not  look  up  the  old  books  to  see,  lest  their  charm  as  well  as 
their  sentiment  should  fade  in  the  light  of  a  more  critical 
age.     Then  Scott  and  Dickens,  jNIiss  Edgeworth,  more 
often  Holiday  House,  filled  the  hours  before  tea.    After 
all,  the  old   division  of  the  day,  the  young  generation 
would  be  ashamed  to  go  back  to,  had  its  uses. 


60  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


IV 


The  tea,  when  announced,  was  worth  waiting,  or  put- 
ting down  the  most  entrancing  book,  for.  Had  I  my  way 
I  would  make  Philadelphia  dine  again  at  four  o'clock  for 
the  sake  of  the  tea — of  the  frizzled  beef  that  only  Phila- 
delphia ever  frizzled  to  a  turn,  the  smoked  salmon  that 
only  Philadelphia  ever  smoked  as  an  art,  the  Maryland 
biscuits  that  ought  to  be  called  Philadelphia  biscuits  for 
they  were  never  half  so  good  in  their  native  land,  the 
home-made  preserves  put  up  in  that  sunshiny  kitchen 
where  lilacs  bloomed  at  the  door.  After  all  this  long 
quarter  of  a  century,  the  smell  of  beef  frizzling  would  take 
me  back  to  Eleventh  and  Spruce  on  a  winter  evening  as 
straight  as  the  fragrance  of  the  flowering  bean  carries  me 
to  Pompeii  in  the  early  springtime,  or  of  garlic  to  the  little 
sunlit  towns  of  Provence  at  any  season  of  the  year.  The 
tea  was  a  triumph  of  simplicity,  but  when  there  were  guests 
it  became  a  feast.  As  a  rule,  it  was  the  meal  to  which  the 
children  and  grandchildren  who  did  not  live  in  the  Spruce 
Street  house  were  invited,  and  loved  best  to  be  invited. 
For  on  these  occasions  my  Grandmother  could  be  relied 
upon  to  provide  stewed  oysters,  the  masterpiece  of 
Margaret,  her  old  grey-haired  cook;  and  oyster  cro- 
quettes from  Augustine's — my  Grandfather  would  as  soon 
have  begim  the  day  without  prayers  as  my  Grandmother 
have  given  a  feast  without  the  help  of  Augustine,  that 
caterer  of  colour  who  was  for  years  supreme  in  Philadel- 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  61 

phia;  braiuly  peaches  that,  like  the  preserves,  had  been 
put  up  at  home,  the  brandy  poured  in  with  unexpected 
lavishness  for  so  temperate  a  household;  and  little  round 
cakes  with  white  icing  on  top — what  dear  little  ghosts 
from  out  a  far  past  they  seemed  when,  after  a  quarter 
of  a  century  in  a  land  where  people  know  nothing  of  the 
delights  of  little  round  cakes  with  white  icing  on  top,  I  ate 
them  again  at  Philadelphia  feasts.  If  the  solemn,  digni- 
fied Grandfather  at  one  end  of  the  table  kept  our  enjoy- 
ment within  the  bounds  of  ceremony,  we  felt  no  restraint 
with  the  little  old  Grandmother  who  beamed  upon  us  from 
the  other,  as  she  poured  out  the  tea  and  coffee  with  hands 
trembling  so  that,  in  her  later  years,  the  man  servant, — 
usually  coloured  and  not  to  Philadelphia  as  yet  known  as 
butler  or  footman, — always  stood  close  by  to  catch  the  tea 
or  coffee  pot  when  it  fell,  which  it  never  did. 

V 

I  recall  more  formal  family  reunions,  above  all  the 
Golden  Wedding,  as  impressive  as  a  court  function,  the 
two  old  people  enthroned  at  the  far  end  of  the  front  par- 
lour, the  sons  and  daughters  and  grandchildren  approach- 
ing in  a  solemn  line — an  embarrassed  line  when  it  came  to 
the  youngest,  always  shy  in  the  awful  presence  of  the 
Grandfather — and  offering,  each  in  turn,  their  gifts.  We 
were  by  no  means  a  remarkable  family,  to  the  unpre- 
judiced we  may  have  seemed  a  commonplace  one,  my 
forefathers  evidently  having  decided  that  leaving  Eng- 


62  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

land  for  America  was  a  feat  remarkable  enough  to  satisfy 
the  ambitions  of  any  one  family  and  having  then  pro- 
ceeded to  rest  comfortably  on  their  respectable  laurels,  but 
we  took  each  other  with  great  seriousness.  The  oldest 
Aunt,  who  was  married  and  lived  in  New  York,  received 
on  her  annual  visit  to  Spruce  Street  the  homage  due  to  a 
Princess  Royal,  and  no  King  or  Emperor  could  have 
caused  more  of  a  flutter  than  my  Grandfather  when  he 
honoured  one  of  his  children  with  a  visit.  Family  anni- 
versaries were  scrupulously  observed,  the  legend  of  family 
affection  was  kept  up  as  conscientiously,  whatever  it  cost 
us  in  discomfort,  and  there  were  times  when  we  paid 
heavily.  I  would  have  run  many  miles  to  escape  one  Uncle 
who,  when  he  met  me  in  the  street,  would  stop  to  ask  how  I 
was,  and  how  we  all  were  at  home,  and  then  would  stand 
twisting  his  moustache  in  visible  agony,  trying  to  think 
what  the  affectionate  intimacy  between  us  that  did  not 
exist  required  him  to  say,  while  I  thanked  my  stars  that 
we  were  in  the  street  and  not  in  a  house  where  he  would 
have  felt  constrained  to  kiss  me.  We  were  horribly  exact 
in  this  matter  of  kissing.  There  was  a  family  legend  of 
another  Uncle  from  New  York  who  once,  when  he  came 
over  for  some  family  meeting,  was  so  eager  to  do  his  duty 
by  his  nieces  that  he  kissed  not  only  all  of  them — no  light 
task — but  two  or  three  neighbours'  little  girls  into  the  bar- 
gain. I  think,  however,  that  every  Philadelphia  family 
took  itself  as  seriously  and  that  our  scruples  were  not  a 
monopoly  brought  with  us  from  Virginia  and  Maryland. 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  63 

In  a  town  where  family  names  are  handed  down  from 
generation  to  generation,  so  that  a  family  often  will  boast, 
as  ours  did,  not  only  a  "  Jr."  but  a  "  3d,"  and  lose  no 
opportunity  to  let  the  world  know  it,  family  feeling  is  not 
likely  to  be  allowed  to  wilt  and  die. 

Every  public  holiday  also  was  a  family  affair  to  be 
observed  with  the  rigours  of  the  family  feast.  Christmas 
for  me,  when  I  did  not  celebrate  it  at  the  Convent  with 
Midnight  Mass  and  a  Creche  in  the  chapel  and  kind  nuns 
trying  to  make  me  forget  I  had  not  gone  home  like  other 
little  girls,  took  me  to  the  Spruce  Street  house  in  time 
to  look  on  at  the  succession  of  Uncles  and  Aunts  who 
dropped  in  on  Christmas  Eve  and  went  away  laden  with 
bundles,  and  carrying  in  some  safe  pocket  a  collection  of 
envelopes  with  a  crisp  new  greenback  in  each,  the  sum 
varying  from  one  hundred  dollars  to  five  according  to  the 
age  of  the  child  or  grandchild  whose  name  was  on  the 
envelope — my  Grandfather  gave  with  the  fine  patriarchal 
air  he  maintained  in  all  family  relations.  The  family 
appropriation  of  Thanksgiving  Day  and  Washington's 
Birthday  I  did  not  grasp  until  after  I  left  school,  for 
while  I  was  at  the  Convent  they  were  both  spent  there, 
where  they  dwindled  into  insignificance  compared  to 
Reverend  ^Mother's  feast  and  its  glories.  As  a  rule,  I 
must  have  been  at  the  Convent  as  well  for  the  Fourth  of 
July,  though  I  retain  one  jubilant  vision  of  myself  and  a 
bag  of  torpedoes  in  the  back-yard,  solemnizing  a  little 
celebration  among  the  roses.     And  I  have  larger  visions 


64 


OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


of  military  parades  in  broiling  sunshine  and  of  the  City 
Troop  filling  the  quiet  streets  with  their  gorgeousness 
which  awed  me  long  before  the  knowledge  of  their  his- 
toric origin  and  uniform  inspired  me  with  reverence. 

VI 

Other  duties  and  pleasures  and  observances  that  for 
most  Philadelphia  children  were  scattered  through  the 
interminable  year,  were  crowded  into  my  short  holiday: 
visits  to  the  dentist,  to  Dr.  Hopkins,  Dr.  White's  assistant, 
it  being  a  test  of  Philadelphia  respectability  to  have  one's 
teeth  seen  to  by  Dr.  AVhite  or  one  of  his  assistants  or  stu- 
dents, and  the  regidar  appointment  was  as  nuich  of  obliga- 
tion for  me  as  INIass  on  Sunday;  visits  to  the  Academy 
of  Fine  Arts  in  the  old  Chestnut  Street  building,  as  I 
remember  set  back  at  the  end  of  a  court  that  made  of  it  a 
place  apart,  a  consecrated  place  which  I  entered  with  as 
little  anticipation  of  amusement  as  St.  Joseph's  Church 
hidden  in  Willing's  Alley,  and  was  the  more  surprised 
therefore  to  be  entertained,  as  I  must  have  been,  by  Benja- 
min AVest,  for  of  no  other  painter  there  have  I  the  faintest 
recollection;  visits  to  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences, 
where  I  liked  the  rows  upon  rows  of  stuffed  birds,  and  the 
strange  things  in  bottles,  and  the  colossal  skeletons  that 
filled  me  with  the  same  delicious  shivers  as  the  stories  of 
afreets  and  genii  in  The  Arabian  Nights;  visits  to  Fair- 
mount  Park,  leagues  away,  houses  left  behind  before  it 


J 


■****!  ..^ 


^X*' 


CLASSIC  FAIRMOUNT 


A  CHILD  IN  PHILADELPHIA  67 

was  reached,  where  the  mysterious  machinery  of  the 
Waterworks  was  as  terrifying  as  the  skeletons,  and  1 
thought  it  much  pleasanter  outside  under  the  blue  sky; 
visits  to  the  theatre — the  most  wonderful  visits  of  all,  for 
they  took  me  out  into  the  night  that  I  knew  only  from 
stolen  vigils  in  the  Convent  dormitory,  or  glimpses  from 
the  Spruce  Street  windows.  Romance  was  in  the  dimly-lit 
streets,  in  the  stars  above,  in  the  town  after  dark,  which 
I  was  warned  I  was  never  to  brave  alone  until  I  can  laugh 
now  to  think  how  terrified  I  was  the  first  time  I  came  home 
late  by  myself,  in  my  terror  jumping  into  a  street-car 
and  claiming  the  protection  of  a  contemptuous  young- 
woman  whom  w  ork  had  not  allowed  to  draw  a  conventional 
line  between  day  and  night. 

I  have  never  got  rid  of  that  suggestion  of  romance, 
not  so  much  in  the  theatre  itself  as  in  the  going  to  it,  and, 
to  this  day,  a  matinee  in  broad  daylight  will  bring  back  a 
little  of  the  old  thrill.  But  nothing  can  bring  back  to  any 
theatre  the  glitter,  the  brilliancy,  the  splendour  of  the  old 
Chestnut,  the  old  Walnut,  the  old  Arch,  then  already 
dingy  with  age  I  have  no  doubt,  but  transfigured  by  my 
childhood's  ecstasies  in  them.  Nothing  can  persuade  me 
that  any  plays  have  been,  or  could  be,  written  to  surpass  in 
beauty,  pathos  and  humour,  Solon  Shingle,  and  Arrah-na- 
Poguc,  and  Our  American  Coudn,  and  The  Black  Crook, 
and  Ours,  though  I  have  forgotten  all  but  their  names; 
that  in  opera  Clara  Louise  Kellogg  ever  had  a  rival;  that 


68  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

in  gaiety  and  wit  La  Grande  Duchesse  and  La  Belle 
Helene  could  be  eclipsed ;  or  that  any  actors  could  compete 
with  Sothern  and  Booth  and  JNIrs.  Drew  and  the  Daven- 
ports, and  Charlotte  Cushman  as  Meg  Merrilies — there 
was  a  bit  of  good  old  melodramatic  acting  to  make  a  small 
Convent  girl's  flesh  creep!  Shakespeare  was  redeemed 
by  Booth  from  the  dulness  of  the  Convent  reading-book 
and  entered  gloriously  into  my  Convent  life.  For  one 
happy  winter,  it  was  not  I  who  led  the  long  procession 
do\vn  to  the  refectory,  though  nobody  could  have  sus- 
pected it,  but  the  Ghost  of  Hamlet's  Father,  with,  close 
behind  me,  in  gloom  absorbed,  the  Prince  of  Denmark, 
mistaken  by  the  unknowing  for  the  little  girl,  my  friend, 
whose  father,  with  more  than  the  usual  father's  amiable 
endurance,  had  taken  me  with  her  and  her  sister  to  see 
the  play  of  Hamlet  during  the  Christmas  holidays. 

The  theatre  has  become  part  of  the  modern  school 
course.  If  an  actor  like  Forbes-Robertson  gives  a  fare- 
well performance  of  Hamlet,  or  a  manager  like  Beerbohm 
Tree  produces  a  patriotic  melodrama,  or  the  company 
from  the  Theatre  Fran^ais  perform  one  of  the  rare 
classics  that  the  young  person  may  be  taken  to,  I  have 
seen  a  London  theatre  tilled  with  school  girls  and  boys. 
From  what  I  hear  I  might  imagine  the  theatre  and  the 
opera  to  be  the  most  serious  studies  of  every  Philadelphia 
school.  At  the  Convent  I  should  have  envied  the  modern 
students  could  I  have  foreseen  their  liberty,  but  they  have 


L 


,r- 


7) 


M%  4,  fe 


M 


«    ■*  ^..' 


DOWN  PINE  STREET 


A  CHILD  IN  PIIILADELPIIIA  71 

more  reason  to  envy  me.  The  gilt  has  been  rubbed  too 
soon  off  their  gingerbread,  too  soon  has  the  tinsel  of  their 
theatre  been  tarnished.  jNly  Spartan  training  gave  me  a 
theatre  that  can  never  cease  to  be  a  Wonderland,  just  as  it 
endowed  me  with  a  Philadelphia  that  will  endure,  until  this 
world  knows  me  no  more,  as  a  beautiful,  peaceful  town 
where  roses  bloom  in  the  sunny  back-yards,  and  people  live 
with  dignity  behind  the  plain  red  brick  fronts  of  its  long, 
straight  streets. 


CHAPTER  IV:   AT  THE  CONVENT 


1^  S  the  theatre,  in  my  memory,  still  gives  the  crown- 
/  \  ing  glory  to  my  holiday  in  Philadelphia,  so,  in 
L  V  looking  back,  the  brief  holiday  seems  the  spec- 
tacle, the  romance,  the  supreme  moment,  of  my  early  years. 
The  scene  of  my  every-day  life  was  that  Convent  of  the 
Sacred  Heart  at  Torresdale  which  was  the  end  of  the  inter- 
minable ride  in  the  Third  Street  horse-car  and  the  shorter 
ride  in  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  train. 

The  Philadelphian  who  did  not  live  in  the  Convent 
would  have  seen  it  the  other  way  round,  for  the  Convent 
was  unlike  enough  to  Philadelphia  to  suggest  the  romance 
of  the  unusual.  Only  in  one  or  two  respects  did  it  provide 
me  with  facts  that  every  proper  Philadelphian  was  brought 
up  to  know,  and  let  me  say  again  that  because  I  had  to 
find  out  the  others — the  more  characteristically  Philadel- 
phia facts — for  myself,  I  think  they  probably  made  a 
stronger  impression  upon  me  than  upon  the  Philadelphian 
guiltless  of  ever  straying,  or  of  ever  having  been  allowed 
to  straj',  from  the  approved  Philadelphia  path. 

II 

When  the  Ladies  of  the  Sacred  Heart  decided  to 
open  a  Convent  in  Philadelphia,  an  uncertain  enterprise 
if  it  is  considered  how  un-Catholic  Philadelphia  was,  they 

72 


AT  THE  CONVENT  73 

began  in  a  fairly  modest  way  by  taking  a  large  house  at 
Torresdale,  with  lawns  and  gardens  and  woods  and  a  great 
old-fashioned  barn,  the  country  seat  of  a  Philadelphian 
whose  name  I  have  forgotten.  It  stood  to  the  west  of  the 
railroad,  at  a  discreet  distance  from  the  little  cluster  of 
houses  by  the  riverside  that  alone  meant  Torresdale  to  the 
Philadelphians  who  lived  in  them. 

The  house,  I  can  now  see,  was  typical  as  I  first  knew 
it,  the  sort  the  Philadelphian  built  for  himself  in  the 
suburbs  at  a  period  too  removed  from  Colonial  days  for 
it  to  have  the  beauty  of  detail  and  historic  interest  of  the 
Colonial  house,  and  yet  near  enough  to  them  for  dignity 
of  proportion  and  spaciousness  to  be  desirable,  if  not 
essential  to  a  Philadelphian's  comfort.  A  wide,  lofty  hall 
ran  from  the  front  door  to  the  back,  on  either  side  were 
two  large  airy  rooms  with  space  between  for  the  broad 
main  stairway,  a  noble  structure,  and  the  carefully  con- 
cealed back  stairwaj' — half-w^ay  up  which  in  my  time  was 
the  little  infirmary  window  where,  at  half  past  ten  every 
morning,  Sister  Odille  dispensed  pills  and  powders  to 
those  in  need  of  them.  Along  the  entire  front  of  the 
house  was  a  broad  porch, — the  indispensable  Philadelphia 
piazza — its  roof  supported  by  a  row  of  substantial  columns 
over  which  roses  and  honeysuckle  clambered  fragrantly 
and  luxuriantly  in  the  June  sunshine.  The  house  was 
painted  a  cheerful  yellow  that  went  well  with  the  white 
of  the  woodwork  about  the  windows  and  the  porch:  not 
a  very  beautiful  type  of  house,  but  pleasant,  substantial, 


74 


OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


luxurious,  and  making  as  little  outward  show  of  its  luxury 
as  the  plain  red  brick  town  house  of  the  wealthy  Phila- 
delphian. 

How  comfortable  a  type  of  house  it  was  to  live  in, 
I  know  from  experience  of  another,  not  a  school,  within 
sight,  a  ten  minutes'  walk  across  the  fields,  and  like  it 
in  design  and  arrangement  and  even  colour, — in  every- 
thing except  size, — which  my  Father  took  one  summer: 
to  me  a  most  memorable  summer  as  it  was  the  first  I  spent 
outside  the  Convent  limits  from  the  beginning  to  the  end 
of  the  long  holiday.  The  jerry-builder  had  had  no  part  in 
putting  up  the  solid,  well-constructed  walls  which  stood 
firm  against  winter  storms  and  winds,  and  were  no  less  a 
protection  from  the  torrid  heat  of  a  Philadelphia  summer. 
But  fashion  can  lea\e  architecture  no  more  alone  than 
dress.  Already,  the  newer  group  of  houses  down  by  the 
Delaware  were  built  of  the  brown  stone  which,  to  my 
mind,  dates  the  beginning  of  the  Philadelphian's  fall  from 
architectural  grace,  the  beginning  of  his  distrust  in  Wil- 
liam Penn's  plans  for  his  well-being  and  of  his  foolish 
hankering  after  the  fleshpots  of  New  York. 

The  Convent,  before  I  came  to  it,  had  been  a  victim 
to  the  brown  stone  fashion.  With  success,  the  pleasant  old 
country  house  had  grown  too  small  for  the  school  into 
which  it  had  been  converted,  and  a  southern  wing  had  been 
added :  a  long,  low  building  with  the  Chapel  at  the  far  end, 
all  built  in  brown  stone  and  in  a  style  that  passed  for 
Gothic  and  that  a  thousand  times  I  could  have  wished 


V 


LOUDOUN.  MAIN  STREET   GERiUNTOWN 


AT  THE  CONVENT  77 

based  upon  any  other  model.  For  the  upper  room  in  the 
wing,  ambitiously  christened  by  somebody  Gothic  Hall, 
had  a  high  pointed  roof  that  made  it  an  ice-house  in  winter 
and,  for  our  sins,  it  was  used  as  the  Dormitory  of  the 
Sacred  Heart  where  1  slept.  I  can  recall  mornings  when 
the  water  was  frozen  in  our  pitchers  while  the  big  stove, 
in  the  middle  of  the  high-pitched  room,  burned  red  hot 
as  if  to  mock  at  us  as,  with  numbed  fingers,  we  struggled 
to  make  our  beds  and  wash  ourselves  and  button  and  hook 
on  our  clothes.  And  the  builders  had  so  contrived  that 
summer  turned  our  fine  Gothic  Dormitory  into  a  fiery 
furnace.  How  many  June  nights,  contrary  to  all  the  rules, 
have  I  hung  out  of  the  little,  horribly  Gothic  window  at  the 
head  of  my  alcove,  gasping  in  the  warm  darkness  that  was 
so  sweet  and  stifling  with  the  fragrance  of  the  flowers  in 
Madame  Huguet's  garden  just  below. 

I  had  not  been  long  at  the  Convent  before  another 
brown  stone  wing  extended  to  the  north  and  two  stories 
were  added  to  the  main  building  w^hich,  for  the  sake  of 
harmony,  was  now  painted  brown  from  top  to  bottom.  In 
a  niche  on  this  new^  facade,  a  statue  of  the  Sacred  Heart 
was  set,  and  all  semblance  to  the  old  country  house  was 
gone,  except  for  the  broad  porch  without  and  the  wtII- 
proportioned  rooms  within.  But  these,  and  later  improve- 
ments, additions  and  alterations  cannot  make  me  forget 
the  Convent  as  it  was  when  I  first  came  to  it,  growing  up 
about  the  simple,  solidly-built,  spacious  yellow  house  that 
was  once  the  Philadelphian's  ideal  of  suburban  comfort. 


78  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

and  so  like  the  house  where  I  spent  my  most  memorable 
summer,  so  like,  save  for  the  size  and  the  colour,  my  Great- 
Grandfather  Ambrose  White's  old  house  on  the  Turnpike 
at  Chestnut  Hill,  so  like  innumerable  other  country  houses 
of  the  same  date  where  I  visited. 

HI. 

The  Convent  rule  and  discipline  could  not  alter  the 
changing  of  the  seasons  as  Philadelphia  ordered  them. 
They  might  appear  to  us  mainly  regulated  by  feasts  and 
fasts — All  Saints  and  All  Souls,  the  milestones  on  the 
road  to  Christmas;  Lent  and  the  month  of  St.  Joseph 
heralding  the  approach  of  spring;  the  month  of  ^Nlary 
and  the  month  of  the  Sacred  Heart,  Ascension  and 
Corpus-Christi,  as  ardent  and  splendid  as  the  spring  and 
summer  days  they  graced.  But,  all  the  same,  each  season 
came  laden  with  the  pleasures  held  in  common  by  all  fortu- 
nate Philadelphia  children  who  had  the  freedom  of  the 
country  or  the  countrified  suburbs. 

Tlie  school  year  began  with  the  fall,  when  any  night 
might  bring  the  first  frost  and  the  first  tingle  in  the  air — 
champagne  to  quicken  the  blood  in  a  school  girl's  veins, 
and  make  the  sitting  still  through  the  long  study  and  class 
hours  a  torture.  The  woods  shone  with  gold;  the  Virginia 
creeper  flamed  on  the  front  porch;  sickel  pears  fell,  ripe 
and  luscious,  from  the  tree  close  to  the  Chapel  where  it  was 
against  the  law  to  go  and  pick  them  up  but  where  no  law 
in  the  world  could  have  barred  the  wav;  chestnuts  and 


^^^' 


UP  THE  SCHUYLKILL  FROM  THE  OLD  RESERVOIR 


T^ 


\ 


\o  law 

■  s  and 


HUJVi«Hf-.afl  QM  3HT  UOH'i  .UlXJ'/UH'Jfe  :iliT  lii 


id^. 


JI;;,A 


-«-.. 


Xv; 


?i 


AT  THE  CONVENT  79 

hickory  nuts  and  tlie  walnuts  that  stained  my  fingers  black 

to  open  offered  a  substantial  dessert  after  as  substantial 

a  dinner  as  ever  children  were  served  with.     But  those 

were  the  joyful  years  when  hunger  never  could  be  satisfied 

and  digestion  was  equal  to  any  surfeit  of  raw  chestnuts — 

or  raw  turnips  for  that  matter,  if  the  season  supplied  no 

lighter  dainties,  or  of  next  to  anything  that  could  be 

picked  up  and  eaten.    I  know  I  drew  the  line  only  at  the 

huge,  white,  oversweet  mulberries  strewing  the  grass  by 

the  swings  in  JNlulberry  Lane,  that  favourite  scene  of  the 

war  to  the  knife  we  waged  under  the  name  of  Old  INIan  and 

Bands,  primitive  games  not  to  be  outdone  by  the  Tennis 

and  Plockey  of  the  more  sophisticated  modern  school  girl. 

The  minute  the  Refectory  was  left  for  the  noonday 

hour  of  recreation  on  a  brisk  autumn  day,  there  was  a  wild 

scamper  to  the  woods  where,  just  beyond  the  gate  that  led 

into  them,  the  hoary  old  chestnut  trees  spread  their  shade 

and  dropped  their  fruit  on  either  side  the  hill  between  the 

Poisonous  A^'alley,  a  thrill  in  its  deadly  name,  and  the 

graveyard,  few  crosses  then  in  the  green  enclosure  which 

now,  alas!  is  too  well  filled.    The  shadow  of  death  lay  so 

lightly  upon  us  that  I  recall  to-day  only  the  delicious  rustle 

of  eager  feet  through  the  fallen  leaves,  and  the  banging  of 

stone  upon  stone  as  hickory  nuts  cracked  between  them, 

I  feel  only  the  delicious  pricking  of  the  chestnut  burrs 

in  the  happy,  hardened  fingers  of  the  school  girl.     And 

these,  anyway,  are  memories  I  share  with  every  Philadel- 

phian  who,  as  a  child,  wandered  in  the  suburbs  or  the  near 


80  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

country  when  the  woods  were  gold  and  scarlet,  and  the  way 
through  them  was  carpeted  with  leaves  hiding  rich  stores 
of  nuts  for  the  seeker  after  treasure. 

But  no  Philadelphia  child  in  the  shelter  of  her  own 
house  could  know  the  meaning  of  the  Philadelphia  winter 
as  I  knew  it  in  the  Convent,  half  frozen  in  that  airy  dormi- 
tory of  the  Sacred  Heart,  shivering  in  shawl  and  hood 
through  early  ]\Iass  in  the  icy  Chapel,  still  huddled  in  my 
shawl  at  my  desk  or  scurrying  as  fast  as  discipline  would 
Avink  at  through  the  windy  passages.  The  heating  ar- 
rangements, somehow,  never  succeeded  in  coping  with  the 
extreme  cold  of  a  severe  winter  in  the  large  rooms  and 
halls  of  the  new  wings,  and  I  must  confess  that  we  were 
often  most  miserably  uncomfortable.  I  cannot  but  wonder 
what  the  pampered  school  girls  of  the  present  generation 
in  the  same  Convent  would  say  to  such  discomfort.  But  it 
did  us  no  harm.  Indeed,  though  I  shiver  at  the  memory, 
I  am  sure  it  did  us  good.  We  came  out  the  healthier  and 
hardier  for  it,  mucii  as  the  Englishman  does  from  his  cold 
house,  the  coldest  in  the  world.  The  old  conditions  of  a 
hardier  life,  that  either  killed  or  cured,  did  far  more  to 
make  a  vigorous  people  than  all  the  new-fangled  eugenics 
ever  can. 

If  I  had  little  of  the  comfort  of  the  Philadelphia  child 
in  the  Philadelphia  house,  I  shared  with  him  the  outdoor 
pleasures  which  winter  provided  by  way  of  compensation 
— the  country  white  under  snow  for  weeks  and  weeks, 
snowballs  to  be  made  and  snow  houses  built,  sliding  to  be 


AT  THE  CONVENT  81 

had  on  the  frozen  lake,  and  coasting  down  the  long  hill 
just  heyond  the  gate  into  the  woods,  when  there  were  sleds 
to  coast  on.  And  what  excitement  in  the  marvellous  snow- 
storms that  have  vanished  with  other  marvels  of  my  youth 
— the  storms  that  put  the  new  blizzard  to  shame,  when  the 
snow  drifts  were  mountains  high,  and  it  took  all  the  men 
on  the  farm,  with  Big  John  at  their  head,  to  clear  a  way 
through  the  near  paths  and  roads.  I  recall  one  storm  in 
particular  when  my  Father,  who  had  been  making  his 
periodical  visit  to  my  Sister  and  myself,  left  the  Convent 
at  six,  was  snowed  up  in  his  train,  and  never  reached  the 
dingy  Depot  in  Frankford  until  three  the  next  morning, 
and  when  for  days  w-e  got  out  of  the  house  only  for  a 
solemn  ten  minutes'  walk  each  noon  on  the  wide  front 
porch,  where  it  was  a  shocking  breach  of  discipline  to  be 
seen  at  all  other  times  except  on  Thursday  and  Sunday, 
the  Convent  visiting  days.  Of  the  inspiriting  rigours  of 
a  Philadelphia  winter  I  was  never  in  ignorance. 

In  the  snow  drifts  and  storms  of  winter  Big  John  and 
his  men  were  not  more  helpless  than  in  the  floods  and 
slush  that  began  with  the  first  soft  breath  of  the  Philadel- 
phia sjiring.  Wearing  our  big  shapeless  overshoes,  we 
waded  through  the  puddles  and  jumped  over  the  streams 
in  the  Convent  paths  and  roads  as,  in  town,  Philadelphia 
children,  with  their  "  gums  "  on,  jumped  over  the  streams 
and  waded  through  the  puddles  in  the  abominably  paved 
streets.  But  then  hope  too  began  when  the  first  spaces  of 
green  were  imcovered  by  the  melting  snow.     The  first 


82  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

spring-beauty  in  the  sunny  spaces  of  the  woods,  the  first 
flowery  frost  in  the  orchard,  the  first  blooming  of  the  tuhp 
trees,  were  among  the  great  events  of  the  year.  And  what 
joy  now  in  the  new  hunt! — what  treasure  of  spring- 
beauties  everywhere  in  the  woods  as  the  sun  gi-ew  warmer, 
of  shyer,  retired  liepaticas,  of  white  violets  running  wild 
in  the  swampy  fields  beyond  the  lake,  of  sweet  trailing 
arbutus,  of  Jacks-in-the-pulpit  flourishing  best  in  the 
damp  thickets  of  the  Poisonous  Valley  into  which  I  never 
wandered  without  a  tremor  not  merely  because  it  was  a 
forbidden  adventure,  but  because,  though  I  passed  through 
it  unscathed,  I  had  seen  so  often  the  horrible  and  un- 
sightly red  rash  one  whifl*  from  over  its  bushes  and  trees 
could  bring  out  on  the  faces  and  hands  of  my  schoolmates 
with  a  skin  more  sensitive  than  mine.  Games  lost  their 
charm  in  the  spring  sunshine  and  our  one  pleasure  was  in 
the  hunt,  no  longer  for  chestnuts  and  walnuts  and  hickory 
nuts,  but  solely  for  flowers,  bringing  back  great  bunches 
wilting  in  our  hot  little  hands,  to  place  before  the  shrine 
that  aroused  the  warmest  fervours  of  our  devotion  or  was 
tended  by  the  nun  of  our  special  adoration. 

And  before  we  knew  it,  the  spring-beauties  and  hepa- 
ticas  and  white  violets  and  Jacks-in-the-pulpit  disappeared 
from  the  woods,  and  the  flowery  frost  from  the  orchard, 
and  the  great  blossoms  from  the  tulip  trees,  and  summer 
was  upon  us — blazing  summer  when  we  lay  perspiring  on 
our  little  beds  up  there  in  Gothic  Hall  where  a  few  months 
before  we  shivered  and  shook,  perspiration  streamed  from 


m 


,,r^C  ™  ™«MO«T  ..NO  THE  »»SH,NOT«N  ST.«« 


f-r 


AT  THE  CONVENT  85 

our  faces  on  our  school  books  at  the  study  hour,  more  a 
burden  than  ever  as  we  drooped  and  drowsed  in  the  heat; 
— blazing  summer  when  the  fragrance  of  the  roses  hung 
heavy  over  Madame  Huguet's  garden  and  mingled  with 
the  too  sweet  fragrance  of  the  honeysuckle  about  the 
columns  of  the  porch  and  over  every  door; — blazing  sum- 
mer when  all  day  long  meadows  and  gardens  and  lawns 
swooned  under  the  pitiless  sunshine  and  we,  who  had 
braved  the  winter  cold  undismayed,  never  put  as  much  as 
our  noses  out  of  doors  until  the  hour  of  sunset; — blazing 
summer  when  for  many  years  I  saw  the  other  girls  going 
home,  the  gaiety  of  sea  and  mountain  and  change  awaiting 
them,  while  my  Sister  and  I  stayed  on,  desolate  at  heart 
despite  the  efforts  of  the  nuns  to  help  us  forget,  feeling 
forlornly  forsaken  as  we  watched  the  green  burnt  up  into 
brown  and  the  summer  flowers  wilt  and  die,  and  the 
drought  turn  the  roads  to  dust,  and  all  Nature  parched  as 
we  parched  with  it.  The  holiday  dragged  terribly  and, 
reversing  the  usual  order  of  things,  I  counted  the  days 
until  school  would  begin  again.  However,  at  least  I  can 
say  that  I  saw  the  Philadelphia  smnmer  in  its  full  terrors 
as  every  Philadelphia  child  ever  born,  for  whom  wealth  or 
chance  opens  no  gate  of  escape,  must  see  it  and  did  see  it 
of  old. 

And  so  for  me  in  the  Convent  the  seasons  were  the 
same  as  for  the  child  in  Philadelphia  and  its  suburbs.  And 
I  learnt  how  cold  Philadelphia  can  be,  and  how  hot — if 
Penn,  safe  in  England,  was  grateful  for  the  greater  near- 


86 


OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


ness  of  his  town  to  the  sun,  not  a  Philadelphian  on  the 
spot,  sweltering  through  its  midsummer  heat,  has  ever  yet 
shared  his  gratitude.  And  I  learnt  how  beautiful  Phila- 
delphia is  as  it  grows  mild  again  after  winter  has  done  its 
worst,  or  as  it  cools  off  in  the  friendlier  autunm  sun.  And 
not  to  know  these  facts  is  not  to  know  Philadelphia. 

IV 

In  the  Convent  regulation  of  daily  life  lay  the  un- 
conquerable difference.  Philadelphia  has  its  laws  and 
traditions  that  guide  the  Philadelphian  through  every  hour 
and  duty  of  the  day,  and  the  Philadelphian,  who  from  the 
cradle  does  not  obey  these  traditions  and  laws,  can  never  be 
quite  as  other  Philadelphians.  The  Sacred  Heart  is  a 
French  order,  and  the  nuns  imported  their  laws  and  tradi- 
tions from  France,  qualified,  modified,  perhaps,  on  the 
way,  but  still  with  an  unmistakable  foreign  flavour  and 
tendency  that  could  not  pass  unquestioned  in  a  town  where 
the  first  article  of  faith  is  that  everybody  should  do  pre- 
cisely what  everybody  else  does. 

I  remember  when  the  Rhodes  scholars  were  first  sent 
from  America  to  Oxford  a  friend  of  mine  professed  serious 
concern  for  the  future  of  the  University  should  they  intro- 
duce buckwheat  cakes  on  Oxford  breakfast  tables.  And, 
really,  he  was  not  as  funny  as  he  thought.  A  man  is  a  good 
deal  what  his  food  makes  him.  The  macaroni-fed  Italian 
is  not  as  the  sausage-and-sauerkraut-fed  German,  nor  the 
Hindu  who  thrives  on  rice  as  the  Irishman  bred  upon 


,1' 


AT  THE  CONVENT  87 

potatoes.  Never  was  a  town  more  concerned  with  the 
Question  of  Food  than  Philadelphia  and  I  now  see  quite 
plainly  that  I,  beginning  my  day  at  the  Convent  on  coffee 
and  rolls,  could  not  have  been  as  the  correct  Philadelphia 
child  beginning  the  day  in  Philadelphia  or  the  suburbs  on 
scrapple  and  buckwheat  cakes  and  maple  syrup.  Thus, 
the  line  of  separation  was  drawn  while  I  was  still  in  short 
skirts  with  my  hair  cropped  close. 

The  Convent  day  continued,  as  it  began,  with  differ- 
ences. 1  sat  down  at  noon  to  the  substantial  French 
breakfast  which  at  the  Convent,  as  a  partial  concession  to 
American  ideals,  became  dinner.  At  half  past  three,  like 
a  little  French  girl,  I  had  my  g outer,  for  which  even  the 
French  name  was  retained — how  w'ell  I  remember  the  big, 
napkin-lined  basket,  full  of  hmiks  of  good  gingerbread, 
or  big  crackers,  or  sweet  rolls,  passed  round  by  Sister 
Duffy,  probably  the  most  generous  of  all  generous  Irish- 
women, who  would  have  slipped  an  extra  piece  into  every 
little  hand  if  she  could,  but  who  was  so  shockingly  cross- 
eyed that  we  got  an  idea  of  her  as  a  disagreeable  old  thing, 
an  ogress,  always  watching  to  see  if  we  took  more  than  our 
appointed  share.  Quite  recently  I  argued  it  all  out  again 
with  the  few  old  Sisters  left  to  greet  me  on  my  first  and 
only  visit  to  the  Convent  during  thirty  years  and,  purely 
for  the  sake  of  the  sentiment  of  other  days,  I  refused  to 
believe  them  when  they  insisted  that  Sister  Duffy,  who  now 
lies  at  peace  in  the  little  graveyard  on  the  hillside  in  the 
woods,  wasn't  cross  at  all,  but  as  tender  as  anv  Sister  who 


88  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

ever  waited  on  hungry  little  girls!  I  would  have  given  a 
great  deal  could  she  have  come  back,  cross-eyes  and  all, 
with  her  big  basket  of  gingerbread  to  make  me  feel  at 
home  again,  as  I  could  not  in  the  Visitors'  dining-room 
where  my  gouter  was  set  out  on  a  neatly  spread  table, 
even  though  on  one  side  of  me  was  "  Marie  "  of  Our  Con- 
vent Days,  my  friend  who  had  been  Prince  of  Denmark 
in  our  Booth-stricken  period,  and  on  the  other  Miss  Rep- 
plier,  the  chronicler  of  our  childish  adventures.  It  was  the 
first  time  we  three  had  sat  there  together  since  more  years 
than  I  am  willing  to  count,  and  I  think  we  were  too  con- 
scious that  youth  now  was  no  longer  of  the  company  not  to 
feel  the  sadness  as  keenly  as  the  pleasure  of  the  reunion  in 
our  old  home. 

Gouter,  with  its  associations,  has  sent  me  wandering 
far  from  the  daily  routine  which  ended,  in  the  matter  of 
meals,  with  a  supper  of  meat  and  potatoes  and  I  hardly 
know  what,  at  half  past  six,  when  little  Philadelphia  girls 
were  probably  just  finishing  their  cambric  tea  and  bread- 
and-butter,  and  even  the  buns  from  Dexter's  when  these 
had  been  added  as  a  special  treat  or  reward.  How  could 
we,  upon  so  much  heavier  fare,  have  seen  things,  how  could 
we  have  looked  upon  life,  just  as  those  other  little  girls 
did? 

V 

We  did  not  play,  any  more  than  we  ate,  like  the  child 
in  Philadelphia  or  its  suburbs.  One  memory  of  our  play- 
time I  have  common  to  all  Philadelphia  children  of  my 


MAIN  STREET,  GERMANTOWN 


AT  THE  CONVENT  91 

generation:  the  memory  of  Signor  Blitz,  on  a  more  than 
usually  blissful  Reverend  Mother's  Feast,  taking  rabbits 
out  of  our  hats  and  bowls  of  gold-fish  out  of  his  sleeve,  and 
holding  a  long  conversation  with  the  immortal  Bobby,  the 
most  prodigious  puppet  that  ever  conversed  with  any  pro- 
fessional ventriloquist.  But  this  was  a  rare  ecstasy  never 
repeated. 

What  games  the  children  in  Rittenhouse  Square  and 
the  Lanes  of  Germantown  had,  I  cannot  record,  but  of 
one  thing  I  am  sure:  they  did  not  go  to  the  tune  and  the 
words  of  "  Sur  le  pont  d' Avignon,"  or  "  Qu  est-ce  qui 
passe  ici  si  tard,"  or  "  II  etait  un  avocat."  Nor,  I  fancy, 
were  "  Malbrough  s'en  va-t'en  guerre  "  and  "  Au  clair  de  la 
luiie,  mon  ami  Pierrot"  the  songs  heard  in  the  Philadel- 
phia nursery.  Nor  is  it  likely  that  "  C'est  le  mois  de 
Marie,"  which  we  sang  as  lustily  all  through  May  as  the 
devout  in  France  sing  it  in  everj^  church  and  every  ca- 
thedral from  one  end  of  their  land  to  the  other,  was  the 
canticle  of  pious  little  Catholic  children  celebrating  the 
month  of  jNIary  at  St.  Joseph's  or  St.  Patrick's.  Nor 
outside  the  Convent  could  the  Bishop  on  his  pastoral 
rounds  have  been  welcomed  with  the  "  Vive!  Vive!  Vive! 
Monseigneur  au  Sacre  Coeur,  Quel  Bonheur!  "  which,  the 
title  appropriately  changed,  was  our  form  of  welcome  to 
every  distinguished  visitor.  And,  singing  these  songs  and 
canticles,  how  could  the  associations  and  memories  we  were 
laying  up  for  ourselves  be  the  same  as  those  of  Philadelphia 
children  whose  ears  and  voices  were  trained  on  "  Juanita  " 


92  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

and  "  Listen  to  the  Mocking  Bird,"  or,  it  may  be,  "  ]March- 
ing  through  Georgia  "  and  "  Way  down  upon  the  Swanee 
River  "  ?  These  things  may  make  subtle  distinctions,  but 
they  are  distinctions  that  can  never  be  overcome  or  out- 
grown. 

In  study  hours,  as  in  playtime  and  at  meals,  we  were 
seldom  long  out  of  this  French  atmosphere.  French  class 
was  only  shorter  than  English.  If  we  were  permitted  to 
talk  at  breakfast,  it  was  not  at  all  that  we  might  amuse 
ourselves,  but  that  we  might  practise  our  French  which 
did  not  amuse  us  in  the  least.  Many  of  the  nuns  were 
French,  often,  it  is  true,  French  from  Louisiana  or  Canada, 
but  their  English  was  not  one  bit  more  fluent  on  that 
account.  Altogether,  there  was  less  of  Philadelphia  than 
of  France  in  the  discipline,  the  devotions,  and  the  relaxa- 
tions of  the  Convent. 

VI 

But,  of  all  the  differences,  the  most  fundamental,  I 
tliink,  came  from  the  fact  that  the  Convent  was  a  Convent 
and  taught  us  to  accept  the  conventual,  the  monastic  inter- 
pretation of  life.  We  were  there  in,  not  only  a  French,  but 
a  cloistered  atmosphere — the  atmosphere  that  Philadel- 
phia least  of  all  towns  could  understand.  The  Friends  had 
attained  to  peace  and  unworldliness  by  staying  in  their  own 
homes  and  fulfilling  their  duty  as  fathers  and  mothers  of 
families,  as  men  and  women  of  business.     But  the  nuns 


AT  THE  CONVENT  93 

saw  no  way  to  achieve  this  end  except  by  shutting  them- 
selves out  of  the  world  and  avoiding  its  temptations.  The 
Ladies  of  the  Sacred  Heart  are  cloistered.  They  leave  the 
Convent  grounds  onh'  to  journey  from  one  of  their  houses 
to  another,  for  care  is  taken  that  they  do  not,  by  staying 
over  long  in  one  school,  form  too  strong  an  attachment  to 
place  or  person.  Where  would  be  the  use  of  being  a  nun 
if  you  were  not  made  to  understand  the  value  of  sacrifice? 
Their  pupils  are,  for  the  time,  as  strictly  cloistered.  Not 
for  us  were  the  walks  abroad  by  which  most  girls  at  board- 
ing school  keep  up  with  the  times — or  get  ahead  of  them. 
We  were  as  closely  confined  to  the  Convent  grounds  as  the 
nuns,  except  during  the  holidays  or  when  a  friend  or  rela- 
tion begged  for  us  a  special  outing.  It  was  not  a  confine- 
ment depending  on  high  stone  walls  and  big  gates  with 
clanging  iron  chains  and  bars.  But  the  wood  fences  run- 
ning with  the  board  walk  above  the  railroad  and  about  the 
woods  and  the  fields  and  the  gardens  made  us  no  less 
prisoners — willing  and  happy  prisoners  as  we  might  be, 
and  were.  This  gave  us,  or  gave  me  at  any  rate,  a  curious 
idea  of  the  Convent  as  a  place  entirely  apart,  a  place  that 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  near  town  or  the  suburb  in 
which  it  stood — a  blessed  oasis  in  the  sad  wilderness  of  the 
world. 

There  is  no  question  that,  as  a  result,  I  felt  myself 
in  anticipation  a  stranger  in  the  wilderness  into  which  I 
knew  I  must  one  day  go  from  the  oasis,  and  in  which  I  used 


94 


OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


to  imagine  I  should  be  as  much  of  an  exile  as  the  Children 
of  Israel  in  the  desert.  Of  course  I  was  not  quite  that 
when  the  time  came,  but  that  for  an  interval  I  was  con- 
vinced I  must  be  explains  how  unlike  in  atmosphere  the 
Convent  was  to  Eleventh  and  Spruce. 

In  all  sorts  of  little  ways  I  was  confirmed  in  this  belief 
by  life  and  its  duties  at  the  Convent.  For  all  that  con- 
cerned me  nearly,  for  all  that  was  essential  to  existence 
here  below,  Philadelphia  seemed  to  me  as  remote  as  Tim- 
buctoo.  I  got  iilsensibly  to  think  of  myself  first  not  as 
a  Philadelphian,  not  as  an  American,  but  as  a  "  Ciiild  of 
the  Sacred  Heart," — the  first  question  under  all  circum- 
stances was  what  I  should  do,  not  as  a  Philadelphian,  but 
as  a  Child  of  the  Sacred  Heart. 

I  cannot  say  how  much  the  mere  name  of  the  thing 
represented — the  honour  and  the  privilege — and  there  was 
not  a  girl  who  had  been  for  any  time  a  pupil  who  did  not 
prize  it  as  I  did.  And  we  were  not  given  the  chance  to 
forget  or  belittle  it.  We  were  impressed  with  the  impor- 
tance of  showing  our  appreciation  of  the  distuiction  Provi- 
dence had  reserved  for  us — of  showing  it  not  merely  by 
our  increased  faith  and  devotion,  but  by  our  bearing  and 
conduct.  We  might  be  slack  about  our  lessons.  That 
was  all  right  at  a  period  when  slackness  prevailed  in  girls' 
schools  and  it  was  unfeminine,  if  not  unladylike,  to  be  too 
learned.  But  we  were  not  let  off  from  the  diligent  cultiva- 
tion of  our  manners.  Our  faith  and  devotion  were 
attended  to  in  a  daily  half  hour  of  religious  instruction. 


ARCH  STREET  MEETING 


AT  THE  CONVENT  97 

But  Sunday  was  not  too  holy  a  day  for  the  Politeness 
Class  that  was  held  every  week  as  surely  as  Sunday  came 
round,  in  which  we  were  taught  all  the  mysteries  of  a 
Deportment  that  might  have  given  tips  to  the  great  Tur- 
veydrop  himself, — how  to  sit,  how  to  walk,  how  to  carry 
ourselves  under  all  circimistances,  how  to  pick  up  a  hand- 
kerchief a  passer-by  might  drop — an  unspeakable  martyr- 
dom of  a  class  when  each  unfortunate  student,  in  turn,  went 
through  her  paces  with  the  eyes  of  all  the  school  upon  her 
and  to  the  sound  of  the  stifled  giggles  of  the  boldest.  We 
never  met  one  of  our  mistresses  in  the  corridors  that  we 
did  not  drop  a  laboured  curtsey — a  shy,  deplorably  awk- 
ward curtsey  when  I  met  the  Reverend  Mother,  JNlother 
Boudreau,  a  large,  portly,  dignified  nun  from  Louisiana 
and  a  model  of  deportment,  who  inspired  me  with  a  re- 
spectful fear  I  never  have  had  for  any  other  mortal.  We 
could  not  answer  a  plain  "  Yes  "  or  "  No  "  to  our  mis- 
tresses, but  the  "  Madam  "  must  always  politely  follow. 
"  Remember  "  was  a  frequent  warning,  "  remember  that 
wherever,  or  with  whom,  you  may  be,  to  behave  like  chil- 
dren of  the  Sacred  Heart !  "  A  Child  of  the  Sacred  Heart, 
we  were  often  told,  should  be  knoAVTi  by  her  manners.  And 
so  impressed  were  we  with  this  precept  that  I  remember  a 
half-witted,  but  harmless,  elderly  woman  whom  the  nuns, 
in  their  goodness,  had  kept  on  as  a  "  parlour  boarder  " 
after  her  school  days  were  over,  telling  us  solemnly  that 
when  she  was  in  New  York  and  went  out  shopping  with 
her  sister,  the  young  men  behind  the  counter  at  Stewart's 


98 


OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


would  all  look  at  her  with  admiring  eyes  and  whisper  to 
each  other,  "  Is  it  not  easy  to  see  that  INIiss  C.  is  a  Child 
of  the  Sacred  Heart?  " 

Seriously,  the  training  did  give  something  that  nothing- 
else  could,  and  an  admirable  training  it  was  for  which  girls 
to-day  might  exchange  more  than  one  brain-bewildering 
course  at  College  and  be  none  the  worse  for  it.  In  my  own 
case,  I  admit,  I  should  not  mind  having  had  more  of  the 
other  training,  as  it  has  turned  out  that  my  work  in  life 
is  of  the  sort  where  a  quick  intelligence  counts  for  more 
than  an  elegant  deportment.  But  I  can  find  no  fault  with 
the  Convent  for  neglect.  Girls  then  were  not  educated 
to  work.  If  you  had  asked  any  girl  anywhere  what  was 
woman's  mission,  she  would  have  answered  promptly — 
had  she  been  truthful — "  to  find  a  husband  as  soon  as 
possible;"  if  she  were  a  Convent  girl, — a  Child  of  the 
Sacred  Heart — she  would  have  added,  "  or  else  to  become 
a  nun."  Her  own  struggles  to  fit  herself  for  any  other 
career  the  inconsiderate  Fates  might  drive  her  into,  so 
far  from  doing  her  any  harm,  were  the  healthiest  and  most 
bracing  of  tonics.  Granted  an  average  mind,  she  could 
teach  herself  through  necessity  just  the  important  things 
school  could  not  teach  her  through  a  routine  she  didn't  see 
the  use  of.  She  emerged  from  the  ordeal  not  only  heroi- 
cally but  successfully,  which  was  more  to  the  point.  A 
young  graduate  from  Bryn  INIawr  said  to  me  some  few  days 
ago  that  when  she  looked  at  her  mother  and  the  women 


THE  TRAIN  SHED.  BROAD  STREET  STATION 


r^^ 


AT  THE  CONVENT  101 

of  her  mother's  generation  and  realized  all  they  had  accom- 
plished without  what  is  now  called  education,  she  wondered 
whether  the  girls  of  her  generation,  who  had  the  benefit  of 
all  the  excess  of  education  going,  would  or  could  accom- 
plish more,  or  as  much.  To  tell  the  truth,  I  wonder  my- 
self. But  then  it  may  be  said  that  I,  belonging  to  that 
older  generation,  am  naturally  prejudiced. 

VII 

There  are  moments  when,  reflecting  on  all  I  lost  as  a 
Philadelphian,  I  am  half  tempted  to  regret  my  long  years 
of  seclusion,  busy  about  my  soul  and  my  manners,  at  the 
Convent.  A  year  or  so  would  not  have  much  mattered  one 
way  or  the  other.  I  led,  however,  no  other  life  save  the 
Convent  life  until  I  was  seventeen.  I  knew  no  other 
standpoint  save  the  Convent  standpoint. 

But  the  temptation  to  regret  flies  as  quickly  as  it 
comes.  I  loved  the  life  too  well  at  the  time,  I  love  it  too 
well  in  the  retrospect,  to  have  wanted  then,  or  to  want  now, 
to  do  without  it.  It  was  a  happy  life  to  live,  though  I 
would  not  have  been  a  school  girl  had  I  not,  with  the  school 
girl's  joy  in  the  morbid,  liked  nothing  better  than  to  pose 
as  the  unhappiest  of  mortals — to  be  a  school  girl  was  to 
be  misunderstood  I  would  have  vowed,  had  I,  in  my  safe 
oasis,  ever  heard  the  expression  or  had  the  knowledge  to 
guess  at  its  meaning.  I  loved  every  stone  in  the  house, 
brown  and  ugly  as  every  stone  might  be,  I  loved  every 


102  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

tree  in  the  woods  whether  or  no  it  dropped  pleasant  things 
to  devour,  I  loved  every  hour  of  the  day  whatever  might 
be  its  task.  I  had  a  quick  memory,  study  was  no  great 
trouble  to  me,  and  I  enjoyed  every  class  and  recitation. 
I  enjoyed  getting  into  mischief — I  wore  once  only  the 
Ribbon  for  Good  Conduct — and  I  enjoyed  being  pun- 
ished for  it.  In  a  word,  I  got  a  good  deal  out  of  my  life, 
if  it  was  not  exactly  what  a  girl  was  sent  to  school  to  get. 
And  it  is  as  happy  a  life  to  remember,  with  many  pictu- 
resque graces  and  absurdities,  joys  and  sorrows,  that  an 
uninterrupted  existence  at  Eleventh  and  Spruce  could  not 
have  given. 

I  have  no  desire  to  talk  sentimental  nonsense  about 
my  school  days  having  been  my  happiest.  That  sort  of 
talk  is  usually  twaddle.  It  was  not  as  school  that  I  loved 
the  Convent,  though  as  school  it  had  its  imrivalled  attrac- 
tions ;  it  was  as  home.  AVhen  the  time  came  to  go  from  it 
I  suffered  that  sharp  pang  felt  by  most  girls  on  leaving 
liome  for  school.  I  remember  how  I,  who  affected  a  sub- 
lime scorn  for  the  cry-baby,  blubbered  like  one  myself 
when  1  was  faced  with  the  inunediate  prospect  of  life  in 
Philadelpliia.  How  well  I  recall  my  despair — how  vividly 
I  see  the  foolish  scene  I  made  in  the  empty  Refectory, 
shadowy  in  the  dusk  of  the  June  evening,  where  I  was 
rehearsing  the  valedictory  of  the  Graduating  Class  which 
I  had  been  chosen  to  recite,  and  where,  after  the  first  few 
lines  I  broke  down  to  my  shame,  and  sniffled  and  gurgled 
and  sobbed  in  the  lap  of  the  beloved  mistress  who  was 


AT  THE  CONVf:NT  103 

doing  her  best  to  comfort  nie,  and  also  to  keep  nie  from 
disgracing  her,  as  I  should  have  done  by  any  such  scene  on 
the  great  day  itself. 

If  the  Convent  stands  for  so  much  in  my  memory,  it 
would  be  ungrateful  to  regret  the  years  I  spent  in  it.  The 
sole  reason  would  be  my  loss,  not  as  a  student,  but  as  a 
Philadelphian,  for  this  loss  was  the  price  I  paid.  But  the 
older  I  grow,  the  better  I  realize  that  to  the  loss  1  owe  an 
immeasurable  gain.  For  as  a  child  I  never  got  so  accus- 
tomed to  Philadelphia  as  not  to  see  it  at  all.  The  thing 
we  know  too  well  is  often  the  thing  we  see  least  clearly,  or 
we  should  not  need  the  philosopher  to  remind  us  that  that 
is  best  which  nearest  lieth.  All  through  my  childhood  and 
early  youth  I  saw  Philadelphia  chiefly  from  the  outside, 
and  so  saw  it  with  more  awe  and  wonder  and  lasting  de- 
light than  those  Philadelphians  who,  in  childhood  and 
early  youth,  saw  it  only  from  the  inside, — too  near  for 
it  to  come  together  into  the  picture  that  tells. 


CHAPTER  V:   TRANSITIONAL 


1^  ND  so  it  was  with  a  great  fear  in  my  heart  that, 
/  %  in  the  course  of  time  and  after  I  had  learned  as 
1  m.  httle  as  it  was  decent  for  Philadelphia  girls  to 
learn  in  the  days  before  Bryn  Mawr,  I  left  the  Convent 
altogether  for  Philadelphia.  I  can  smile  now  in  recalling 
the  old  fear,  but  it  was  no  smiling  matter  at  seventeen:  a 
weeping  matter  rather,  and  many  were  the  tears  I  shed  in 
secret  over  the  prospect  before  me.  My  holidays  had  not 
revealed  Philadelphia  to  me  as  a  place  of  evil  and  many 
dangers.  But  as  I  was  to  live  there,  it  represented  the 
world, — the  sinful  world,  worse,  the  unknown  world,  to 
battle  with  whose  temptations  my  life  and  training  at  the 
Convent  had  been  the  preparation. 

It  added  to  the  danger  that  sin  could  wear  so  peaceful 
an  aspect  and  temptation  keep  so  comfortably  out  of 
sight.  During  an  interval,  longer  than  I  cared  to  have  it, 
for  I  did  not  "  come  out  "  at  once  as  a  Philadelphia  girl 
should  and  at  the  Convent  I  had  made  few  Philadelphia 
friends,  my  personal  knowledge  of  Philadelphia  did  not 
go  much  deeper  than  its  house  fronts.  For  the  most  part 
they  bore  the  closest  family  resemblance  to  those  of 
Eleventh  and  Spruce,  with  the  same  suggestion  of  order 
and  repose  in  their  well-washed  marble  steps  and  neatly- 


104 


ST   PETERS,  INTERIOR 


I 


TKAXSITIONAL  107 

drawn  blinds.  My  Father  had  then  moved  to  Third 
Street  near  Spruce,  and  there  rented  a  red  brick  house,  one- 
half,  or  one-third,  the  size  of  my  Grandfather's,  but  very 
like  it  in  every  other  way,  to  the  roses  in  the  tiny  back- 
yard and  to  the  daily  family  routine  except  that,  with  a 
courageous  defiance  of  tradition  I  do  not  know  how  we 
came  by,  we  dined  at  the  new  dinner  hour  of  six  and  said 
our  prayers  in  the  privacy  of  our  bedrooms.  The  Stock 
Exchange  was  only  a  minute  away,  and  yet,  at  our  end, 
Third  Street  had  not  lost  its  character  as  a  respectable 
residential  street.  We  had  for  neighbours  old  ]Miss  Grelaud 
and  the  liullitts  and,  round  the  corner  in  Fourth  Street, 
the  Wisters  and  Bories  and  Schaumbergs, — with  what 
bated  breath  Philadelphia  talked  of  the  beauty  and  talents 
of  ^liss  Emily  Schaumberg,  as  she  still  was! — and  many 
other  Philadelphia  families  who  had  never  lived  any- 
where else.  Life  went  on  as  silently  and  placidly  and 
regularly  as  at  the  Convent.  I  seemed  merely  to  have 
exchanged  one  sort  of  monastic  peace  for  another  and  the 
loudest  sound  I  ever  heard,  the  jingling  of  my  old  friend 
the  horse-car,  was  not  so  loud  as  to  disturb  it. 

If  I  walked  up  Spruce  Street,  or  as  far  as  Pine  and  up 
Pine,  silence  and  peace  enfolded  me.  Peace  breathed, 
exuded  from  the  red  brick  houses  w'ith  their  white  marble 
steps,  their  white  shutters  below  and  green  above,  their 
pleasant  line  of  trees  shading  the  red  brick  pavement. 
The  occasional  brown  stone  front  broke  the  uniformity 
with  such  brutal  discord  that  I  might  have  imagined  the 


108  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

devil  I  knew  was  waiting  for  me  somewhere  lurked  behind 
it,  and  have  seen  in  its  pretentious  aping  of  New  York 
fashion  the  sin  in  which  Philadelphia,  as  the  Sinful  World, 
must  abound.  I  cannot  say  why  it  seemed  to  me,  and  still 
seems,  so  odious,  for  there  were  other  interruptions  to  the 
monotony  I  delighted  in — the  beautiful  open  spaces  and 
great  trees  about  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital  and  St. 
Peter's ;  the  old  Mint  which,  with  its  severe  classical  fa9ade, 
seemed  to  reproach  the  frivolity  of  the  Chestnut  Street 
store  windows  on  every  side  of  it;  General  Paterson's 
square  grey  house  with  long  high-walled  garden  at  Thir- 
teenth and  Locust;  the  big  vellow  Dundas  house  at  Broad 
and  Walnut,  with  its  green  enclosure  and  the  magnolia 
for  whose  blossoming  I  learnt  to  watch  with  the  coming 
of  spring;  that  other  garden  with  wide-spreading  trees 
opposite  my  Grandfather's  at  Eleventh  and  Spruce:  old 
friends  these  quickly  grew  to  be,  kindly  landmarks  on  the 
way  when  I  took  the  walks  tliat  were  so  solitary  in  those 
early  days,  through  streets  where  it  was  seldom  I  met 
anybody  I  knew,  for  the  Convent  had  made  me  a  good 
deal  of  a  stranger  in  my  native  town, — where  it  was  seldom, 
indeed,  I  met  anybody  at  all. 

II 

When  I  went  out,  I  usually  turned  in  the  direction  of 
Spruce  and  Pine,  for  to  turn  in  the  otlier,  towards  Walnut, 
was  to  be  at  once  in  the  business  part  of  the  town  where 
Philadelphia  women  preferred  not  to  be  seen,  having  no 


-^1.7 


rrfmym.  ^  ^.  uX  \  *^$^^£iS^  r:;' 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  HOSPITAL  FROM  PINE  STREET 


I' 


TRANSITIONAL  HI 

desire  to  bridge  over  the  wide  gulf  of  propriety  that  then 
yawned  between  the  sex  and  business.  f]rxcept  for  the 
character  of  tlie  buildings  and  the  signs  at  the  doors,  I 
might  not  have  been  conscious  of  tlie  embarrassing  differ- 
ence between  this  and  my  more  famihar  haunts.  Bankers' 
and  stock-brokers'  offices  were  on  every  side,  but  the 
Third  Street  car  did  not  jingle  any  louder  as  it  passed, 
my  way  was  not  more  crowded,  peace  still  enveloped  me. 
I  gathered  from  my  Father,  who  was  a  broker,  that  the 
Stock  Exchange,  when  buying  and  selling  had  to  be  done 
on  the  si)ot  and  not  by  telephone  as  in  our  degenerate  days, 
was  now  and  then  a  scene  of  animation,  and  it  might  be  of 
noise  and  disorder,  more  especially  at  Christmas,  when  a 
brisker  business  was  done  in  penny  whistles  and  trumpets 
than  in  stocks  and  shares.  But  the  animation  overflowed 
into  Third  Street  only  at  moments  of  panic,  to  us  welcome 
as  moments  of  prosperity  for  they  kept  my  Father  busy — 
we  thrived  on  panics — and  then,  once  or  twice,  I  saw  staid 
Philadelphians  come  as  near  running  as  I  ever  knew  them 
to  in  the  open  street. 

Now  and  then  youth  got  the  better  of  me  and  I  sought 
adventure  in  the  unadventurous  monotony  of  Walnut 
Street  where  the  lawyers  had  their  offices,  the  courts  not 
having  as  yet  migrated  up  to  Broad  Street.  It  was  usually 
lost  in  hea\'y  legal  slumber  and  if  my  intrusion  was  bold, 
at  least  nobody  was  about  to  resent  it.  Nor  could  there 
be  a  doubt  of  the  eminent  respectability  into  which  I  in- 
truded.     The    recommendation    to    Philadelphia    of    its 


112  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

lawyers  was  not  the  high  esteem  in  which  they  were  held 
throughout  the  country,  but  their  social  standing  at  home 
^family  gave  distinction  to  the  law,  not  the  law  to  family. 
Approved  Philadelphia  names  adorned  the  signs  at  almost 
every  office  door  and  not  for  some  years  was  the  evil  day 
to  dawn  when  the  well-known  Philadelphia  families  who 
inherited  the  right  of  the  law  would  be  forced  to  fight 
for  it  with  the  alien  and  the  Jew.  For  me,  I  think  I  am  at 
an  age  when  I  may  own  that  the  irreproachable  names  on 
the  signs  were  not  the  principal  attraction.  Sometimes, 
from  one  of  the  somnolent  offices,  a  friendly  figure  would 
step  into  the  somnolent  street  to  lighten  me  on  my  way, 
and  it  was  pleasanter  to  walk  up  Walnut  in  company  than 
alone.  When  I  went  back  the  other  day,  after  many  years 
and  many  changes  for  Philadelphia  and  myself,  I  found 
most  of  the  familiar  signs  gone,  but  at  one  door  I  was  met 
by  a  welcome  ghost — but,  was  it  the  ghost  of  that  friendly 
figure  or  of  my  lonely  youth  grasping  at  romance  or  its 
shadow?  How  many  years  must  pass,  how  many  experi- 
ences be  gone  through,  before  a  question  like  that  can  be 
asked ! 

If  I  followed  Third  Street  beyond  Walnut  to  Chest- 
nut, I  was  in  the  region  of  great  banks  and  trust  companies 
and  newspaper  offices  and  the  old  State  House  and  the 
courts.  I  had  not  had  the  experience,  or  the  training,  to 
realize  what  architectural  monstrosities  most  of  the  new,  big, 
heavy  stone  buildings  were,  nor  the  curiosity  to  investigate 
what  went  on  inside  of  them,  but  after  the  quiet  red  brick 


h 


•T*T-K 


CONGRESS  HALL.  INDEPENDENCE  HALL,  AND  THE  DREXEL  BUILDING 


T'^ 


ovniT.iriH  xsxaHa  hht  uha  jjah  irm^wmHrnm  ..uah  >;-',^ «.)/■-<-> 


\ir> 


TRANSITIONAL  113 

houses  they  seemed  to  have  business  written  all  over  them 
and  the  street,  compared  to  Spruce  and  Walnut,  appeared 
to  my  unsophisticated  eyes  so  thronged  that  I  did  not  have 
to  be  told  it  was  no  place  for  me.  It  was  plain  that  most 
women  felt  as  I  did,  so  careful  were  they  to  efface  them- 
selves. I  remember  meeting  but  few  on  Chestnut  Street 
below  Eighth  until  JNIr.  Childs  began  to  devote  his  leisure 
moments  and  loose  change  to  the  innocent  amusement  of 
presenting  a  cup  and  saucer  to  every  woman  who  would 
come  to  get  it,  and  as  most  women  in  Philadelphia,  or  out 
of  it,  are  eager  to  grab  anything  they  do  not  have  to  pay 
for,  many  visited  him  in  the  Ledger  office  at  Sixth  and 
Chestnut. 

As  I  shrank  from  doing  what  no  other  woman  did,  and, 
as  the  business  end  of  Chestnut  Street  did  not  offer  me  the 
same  temptation  as  Walnut,  I  never  got  to  know  it  well, — 
in  fact  I  got  to  know  it  so  little  that  my  ignorance  would 
seem  extraordinary  in  anybody  save  a  Philadelphian,  and 
it  remained  as  strange  to  me  as  the  street  of  a  foreign  town. 
I  could  not  have  said  just  where  my  Grandfather's  Bank 
was,  not  once  during  that  period  did  I  set  my  foot  across 
the  threshold  of  the  State  House,  unwilling  as  I  am  to  con- 
fess it.  But  perhaps  I  might  as  well  make  a  full  confession 
while  I  am  about  it,  for  the  truth  will  have  to  come  out 
sooner  or  later.  Let  me  say  then,  disgraceful  as  I  feel  it 
to  be,  that  though  I  spent  two  years  at  least  in  the  Third 
Street  house,  with  so  much  of  the  beauty  of  Philadelphia's 
beautiful  past  at  my  door,  it  was  not  until  some  time  after- 


114 


OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


wards,  when  we  had  gone  to  live  up  at  Thirteenth  and 
Spruce,  that  I  began  to  appreciate  the  beauty  as  well  as 
my  folly  in  not  having  appreciated  it  sooner.  St.  Peter's 
Church  and  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital  I  could  not  ignore, 
many  of  my  walks  leading  me  past  them.  But  I  was 
several  years  older  before  I  saw  Christ  Church,  inside  or 
out.  The  existence  of  the  old  Second  Street  ^Market  was 
unknown  to  me ;  had  I  been  asked  I  no  doubt  would  have 
said  that  the  Old  Swedes  Church  was  miles  off;  I  was 
unconscious  that  I  was  surrounded  by  houses  of  Colonial 
date;  I  was  blind  to  the  meaning  and  dignity  of  great 
gables  turned  to  the  street,  and  stately  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury doorways,  and  dormer  windows,  and  old  ironwork, 
and  a  patchwork  of  red  and  black  brick ;  I  was  indifferent 
to  the  interest  these  things  might  have  given  to  every  step 
I  took  at  a  time  when,  too  often,  every  step  seemed  for- 
lornly barren  of  interest  or  its  possibility.  Into  the  old 
Philadelphia  Library  on  Fifth  Street  I  did  penetrate  once 
or  twice,  and  once  or  twice  sat  in  its  quiet  secluded  alcoves 
dipping  into  musty  volumes :  a  mere  accident  it  must  have 
been,  my  daily  reading  being  provided  for  at  the  easy- 
going, friendly,  pleasantly  dingy,  nuich  more  modern 
Mercantile  Library  in  Tenth  Street.  But  the  memory 
of  these  visits,  few  as  they  were,  is  one  of  the  strongest 
mv  Third  Street  davs  have  left  with  me,  and  I  think,  or 
I  hope,  I  must  have  felt  the  charm  of  the  old  town  if  I 
may  not  have  realized  that  I  did,  for  I  can  never  look  back 


-^-'1. 


7-^ 


/•/j 


BEOS 


/ill?  10. 


N 

toNor 


• '^  ill.  I  MoNrr 

,     i/^f^^lv'     DiAKo,. 


77.     N, 


SECOND  STREET  MARKET 


TRANSITIONAL  117 

to  myself  as  I  was  then  without  seeing  it  as  the  background 
to  all  my  comings  and  goings — a  background  that  lends 
colour  to  my  colourless  life. 

Ill 

1  can  understand  my  ignorance  and  blindness  and  in- 
difference, if  I  cannot  forgive  them.  All  my  long  eleven 
years  at  the  Convent  I  had  had  the  virtue  of  obedience  duly 
impressed  upon  me,  and,  though  there  custom  led  me  easily 
into  the  temptation  of  disobedience,  when  I  returned  to 
Philadelphia  I  was  at  first  too  frightened  and  bewildered 
to  defy  Philadelphia's  laws  written  and  especially  un- 
written, for  in  these  I  was  immediately  concerned.  I  was 
the  more  bewildered  because  I  had  come  away  from  the 
Convent  comfortably  convinced  of  my  own  importance, 
and  it  was  disconcerting  to  discover  that  Philadelphia,  so 
far  from  sharing  the  conviction,  dismissed  me  as  a  person  of 
no  importance  whatever.  I  had  also  my  natural  indolence 
and  moral  cowardice  to  reckon  with.  I  have  never  been 
given  to  taking  the  initiative  when  I  can  avoid  it  and  it  is 
one  of  my  great  grievances  that,  good  and  thorough  Ameri- 
can as  I  am,  I  should  have  been  denied  my  rightful  share 
of  American  go.  Anyway,  I  did  not  have  to  stay  long  in 
Philadelphia  to  learn  for  myself  that  the  Philadelphia 
law  of  laws  obliged  every  Philadelphian  to  do  as  every 
other  Philadelphian  did,  and  that  every  Philadelphian 
was  too  much  occupied  in  evading  what  was  not  the  thing 
in  the  present  to  bother  to  cultivate  a  sentiment  for  the 


118  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

past.  JNIoreover,  I  had  to  contend  against  what  the  Phila- 
delphians  love  to  call  the  Philadelphia  inertia,  while  all  the 
time  they  talk  about  it  they  keep  giving  substantial  proofs 
of  how  little  reason  there  is  for  the  talk.  The  Philadelphia 
inertia  only  means  that  it  is  not  good  form  in  Philadelphia 
to  betray  emotion  on  anv  occasion  or  under  anv  circum- 
stance.  The  coolness,  or  indifference,  of  Philadelphians 
at  moments  and  crises  of  great  passion  and  excitement  has 
always  astonished  the  outsider.  If  you  do  not  understand 
the  Philadelphia  way,  as  I  did  not  then,  you  take  the  Pliila- 
delphian's  talk  literally  and  believe  the  beautiful  Philadel- 
phia calm  to  be  more  than  surface  deep,  as  I  did  who  had 
not  the  sense  as  yet  to  see  that,  even  if  this  inertia  was 
real,  it  was  my  business  to  get  the  better  of  it  and  to  de- 
velop for  myself  the  energy  I  imagined  my  town  and  its 
people  to  be  without.  I  have  often  thought  that  the  Phila- 
delphia calm  is  a  little  like  the  London  climate  that  either 
conquers  you  or  leaves  you  the  stronger  for  having  con- 
quered it. 

IV 

If  one  of  Philadelphia's  unwritten  laws  closed  my  eyes 
to  what  was  most  worth  looking  at  when  I  took  my  walks 
abroad,  another,  no  less  stringent,  limited  those  walks  to  a 
small  section  of  the  town.  On  the  map  Philadelphia  might 
stretch  over  a  vast  area  with  the  possibility  of  spreading 
indefinitely,  but  for  social  purposes  it  was  shut  in  to  the 
East  and  the  West  by  the  Delaware  and  the  Schuylkill, 


J, 


TRANSITIONAL  119 

to  the  North  and  the  South  by  a  single  line  of  the  old 
rhyming  list  of  the  streets:  "  Chestnut,  Walnut,  Spruce 
and  Pine."  I  have  not  the  antiquarian  knowledge  to  say 
who  drew  that  rigid  line,  or  when  what  had  been  all  right 
for  Washington  and  Provosts  of  the  University  and  no 
end  of  distinguished  people  became  all  wrong  for  ordinary 
mortals — I  have  heard  the  line  ridiculed,  but  never  ex- 
plained. No  geographical  boundary  has  been,  or  could  be, 
more  arbitrary,  but  there  it  was,  there  it  is,  and  the  Phila- 
delphian  who  crosses  it  risks  his  good  name.  Nor  can  the 
stranger,  though  unwarned,  disregard  it  with  impunity. 
I  remember  when  I  met  Mrs.  Alexander  Gilchrist,  the 
first  friend  I  made  in  London,  and  she  told  me  the  number 
of  the  house  away  out  North  Twenty-second  Street  where 
she  lived  for  two  years  in  Philadelphia,  I  had  a  moment  of 
Philadelphia  uncertainty  as  to  whether  her  literary  dis- 
tinction could  outbalance  her  social  indiscretion.  Phila- 
delphia never  had  a  doubt,  but  was  serenely  unconscious  of 
her  presence  during  her  two  years  there.  And  yet  she  had 
then  edited  and  published,  with  the  help  of  the  Rossettis, 
her  husband's  Life  of  Blake  which  had  brought  her  fame 
in  JEngland,  and  her  up-town  house  must  have  been  one 
of  the  most  interesting  to  visit.  Walt  Whitman  was  a 
daily  guest  and  few  American  men  of  letters  passed 
through  Philadelphia  without  finding  their  w^ay  to  it. 
Philadelphia,  however,  would  scruple  going  to  Heaven 
were  Heaven  north  of  ^larket  Street. 

It  is  an  absurd  prejudice,  but  I  am  not  sure  if  I  have 


120  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

got  rid  of  it  now  or  if  I  ever  shall  get  rid  of  it,  and  when 
I  M'as  too  young  to  see  its  absurdity  I  would  as  soon  have 
questioned  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope.  It  was  decreed 
that  nobody  should  go  north  of  Market  or  south  of  Pine; 
therefore  I  must  not  go;  the  reason,  probably,  why  I  never 
went  to  Christ  Church — a  pew  had  not  been  in  my  family 
for  generations  to  excuse  my  presence  in  North  Second 
Street — why  I  never,  even  by  accident,  passed  the  Old 
Swedes  or  the  Second  Street  Market.  It  was  bad  enough 
to  cross  the  line  when  I  could  not  help  myself.  I  am 
amused  now — though  my  sensitive  youth  found  no  amuse- 
ment in  it — when  I  think  of  my  annoyance  because  my 
Great-Grandfather,  on  my  Mother's  side,  old  Ambrose 
White  whose  summer  home  was  in  Chestnut  Hill,  lived  not 
many  blocks  from  the  Meeting  House  and  the  Christ 
Church  Burial  Ground  where  Franklin  lies,  in  one  of  those 
fine  old  Arch  Street  houses  in  which  Friends  had  lived  for 
generations  since  there  had  been  Arch  Street  houses  to  live 
in.  Besides,  Mass  and  Vespers  in  the  Cathedral  led  me  to 
Logan  Square,  to  my  dismay  that  religion  should  lead 
where  it  was  as  much  as  my  reputation  was  worth  to  be 
met.  I  have  wondered  since  if  it  was  as  compromising 
for  the  Philadelphian  from  north  of  Market  Street  to  be 
found  in  Rittenhouse  Square. 

Outwardly  I  could  see  no  startling  difference  between 
the  forbidden  Philadelphia  and  my  Philadelphia — "  there 
is  not  such  great  odds,  Brother  Toby,  betwixt  good  and 
evil  as  the  world  imagines,"  I  might  have  said  with  JNIr. 


^^^^ 


FOURTH  AND  ARCH  STREETS  MEETING  HOUSE 


TRANSITIONAL  123 

Shandy  had  I  known  that  JSIr.  Shandy  said  it  or  that  there 
was  a  Mr.  Shandy  to  say  anything  so  wise.  The  Phila- 
delphia rows  of  red  brick  houses,  white  marble  steps,  white 
shutters  below  and  green  above,  rows  of  trees  shading 
them,  were  much  the  same  north  of  Market  Street  and 
south  of  Pine,  except  that  south  of  Pine  the  red  brick 
houses  shrank  and  the  white  marble  and  white  shutters 
grew  shabby,  and  north  of  INIarket  their  uniformity  was 
more  often  broken  by  brown  stone  fronts  which,  together 
with  the  greater  width  of  many  of  the  streets,  gave  a 
richer  and  more  prosperous  air  than  we  could  boast  down 
our  way.  But  it  was  not  for  Philadelphians,  of  all  people, 
to  question  why,  and  it  must  have  been  two  or  three  years 
later,  when  I  was  less  awed  by  Philadelphia,  that  I  went 
up  town  of  my  own  free  will  and  out  of  sheer  defiance. 
I  can  remember  the  time  when  an  innocent  visit  to  so  harm- 
less a  place  as  Girard  College  appeared  to  me  in  the  light 
of  outrageous  daring.  That  is  the  way  in  my  generation 
we  were  taught  and  learned  our  duty  in  Philadelphia. 

My  excursions  to  the  suburbs,  except  to  Torresdale, 
were  few,  which  was  my  loss  for  no  other  town's  suburbs 
are  more  beautiful,  and  they  were  not  on  Philadelphia's 
Index.  Time  and  the  alien  had  not  yet  driven  the  Phila- 
delphian  out  to  the  Main  Line  as  an  alternative  to  "  Chest- 
nut, Walnut,  Spruce  and  Pine,"  but  many  had  country 
houses  there;  Germantown  was  popular,  Chestnut  Hill 
and  Torresdale  were  beyond  reproach.  My  Father,  how- 
ever, who  cultivated  most  of  Philadelphia's  prejudices. 


124  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

was  unexpectedly  heterodox  in  this  particular.  He  could 
not  stand  the  suburbs — poor  man,  he  came  to  spending 
suburban  summers  in  the  end — and  of  them  all  he  held 
Germantown  most  sweepingly  in  disfavour.  I  cannot 
remember  that  he  gave  a  reason  for  his  dislike.  It  may  be 
that  its  grej'-stone  houses  offended  hirh  as  an  infidelity  to 
Philadelphia's  red  brick  austerity.  But  he  could  never 
speak  of  it  with  patience  and  from  him  I  got  the  idea  that 
it  was  the  abyss  of  the  undesirable.  One  of  the  biggest 
surprises  of  my  life  was,  when  I  came  to  look  at  it  with 
my  own  eyes,  to  find  it  as  desirable  a  place  as  beauty  and 
history  can  make. 

V 

The  shopping  I  had  not  the  money  to  do  would  have 
kept  me  within  a  more  exclusive  radius,  for  a  shopping 
expedition  restricted  the  Philadelphian  who  had  any  re- 
spect for  herself  to  Chestnut  Street  between  Eighth  and 
Fifteenth.  Probably  I  was  almost  the  only  Philadelphian 
who  knew  there  were  plenty  of  cheap  stores  in  Second 
Street,  but  that  I  bought  the  first  silk  dress  I  ever  possessed 
there  was  one  of  the  little  indiscretions  I  had  the  sense  to 
keep  to  myself.  A  bargain  in  Eighth  Street  might  be  dis- 
closed as  a  clever  achievement,  if  not  repeated  too  often. 
The  old  Philadelphia  name  and  the  historic  record  of 
Lippincott's,  for  generations  among  the  most  successful 
Philadelphia  publishers,  would  have  permitted  a  periodi- 
cal excursion  into  Market  Street,  even  if  unlimited  latitude. 


TRANSITIONAL  125 

anyway,  had  not  been  granted  to  wholesale  houses  in  the 
choice  of  a  street.  The  well-known  reliability  of  Straw- 
bridge  and  Clothier  might  warrant  certain  purchases  up- 
town and  a  furniture  dealer  as  reliable,  whose  name  and 
address  I  regret  have  escaped  me,  sanction  the  house- 
keeper's penetrating  still  further  north.  But  it  was  safer, 
everything  considered,  to  keep  to  Chestnut  Street,  and  on 
Chestnut  Street  to  stores  approved  by  long  patronage — 
you  were  hall-marked  "  common  "  if  you  did  not,  and  the 
wrong  name  on  the  inside  of  your  hat  or  under  the  flap  of 
your  envelope  might  be  your  social  undoing.  The  self- 
respecting  Philadelphian  would  not  have  bought  her 
needles  and  cotton  anywhere  save  at  Mustin's,  her  ribbons 
anywhere  save  at  Allen's.  She  would  have  scorned  the 
visiting  card  not  engraved  by  Dreka.  She  would  have 
gone  exclusively  to  Bailey's  or  Caldwell's  for  her  jewels 
and  silver;  to  Darlington's  or  Homer  and  Colladay's  for 
her  gloves  and  dresses;  to  Sheppard's  for  her  linen;  to 
Porter  and  Coates,  after  Lippincott's,  for  her  books;  to 
Earle's  for  her  pictures; — prints  were  such  an  exotic  taste 
that  Gebbie  and  Barrie  could  aff'ord  to  hide  in  Walnut 
Street,  and  the  collector  of  books  such  a  rarity  that  Tenth, 
or  was  it  Ninth?  was  as  good  as  any  other  street  for  the  old 
book  store  where  I  had  so  unpleasant  an  experience  that  I 
could  not  well  forget  it  though  I  have  forgotten  its  pro- 
prietor's name.  A  sign  in  the  window  said  that  old  books 
were  bought,  and  one  day,  my  purse  as  usual  empty  but 
my  heart  full  of  hope,  I  carried  there  two  black-bound. 


126  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

gilt-edged  French  books  of  the  kind  nobody  dreams  of 
reading  that  I  had  brought  home  triumphantly  as  prizes 
from  the  Convent:  but  I  and  my  poor  treasures  were  dis- 
missed with  such  contempt  and  ridicule  that  my  spirit  was 
broken  and  I  could  not  summon  up  pluck  to  carry  them 
to  Leary's,  in  Ninth  Street,  who  were  more  liberal  even 
than  Charles  Lamb  in  their  definition,  and  to  whom  any- 
thing printed  and  bound  was  a  book  to  be  bought  and  sold. 
If  hunger  overtook  the  shopper,  she  would  have  eaten 
her  oyster  stew  only  at  Jones's  on  Eleventh  Street  or 
Burns's  on  Fifteenth;  or  if  the  heat  exhausted  her,  she 
would  have  cooled  off  on  ice-cream  only  at  Sautter's  or 
Dexter's,  on  soda-water  only  at  Wyeth's  or  Hubbell's, 
The  hours  for  shopping  were  as  circumscribed  as  the  dis- 
trict. To  be  seen  on  Chestnut  Street  late  in  the  afternoon, 
if  not  unpardonable,  was  certainly  not  quite  the  thing. 

VI 

Shopping  without  money  had  no  charm  and  could  never 
help  to  dispose  of  my  interminable  hours.  The  placid 
beauty  of  the  shopless  streets  was  of  a  kind  to  appeal  more 
to  age  than  youth.  I  wonder  to  this  day  at  the  time  I 
allowed  to  pass  before  I  shook  off  my  respect  for  Phila- 
delphia conventions  sufficiently  to  relieve  the  dulness  of 
my  life  by  straying  from  the  Philadelphia  beaten  track. 
The  most  daring  break  at  first  was  a  stroll  on  Sunday 
afternoon  over  to  West  Philadelphia  and  to  Woodland's. 
Later,  when,  with  a  friend,  I  went  on  long  tramps  through 


j*»M 


JOHNSON  HOUSE,  GERMANTOWN 


TRANSITIONAL  129 

the  Park,  by  the  Wissahiekon,  to  Chestnut  Hill,  it  was 
looked  upon  as  no  less  unladylike  on  our  part  than  the 
new  generation's  cigarette  and  demand  for  the  vote  on 
theirs.  But  if  I  did  my  duty,  I  was  sadly  bored  by  it. 
Often  I  turned  homeward  with  that  cruel  aching  of  the 
heart  the  young  know  so  well,  longing  for  something,  any- 
thing, to  happen  on  the  way  to  interrupt,  to  disorganize, 
to  shatter  to  pieces  the  daily  routine  of  life.  I  still  shrink 
from  the  sharp  pain  of  those  cool,  splendid  October  days 
when  Philadelphia  was  aglow  and  quiveringly  alive,  and 
with  every  breath  of  the  brisk  air  came  the  desire  to  be  up 
and  away  and  doing — but  away  where  in  Philadelphia? — 
doing  what  in  Philadelphia  ?  I  still  shrink  from  the  sharp 
pain  of  the  first  langourous  days  of  spring  when  every 
Philadelphia  back-yard  was  full  of  perfume  and  every 
Philadelphia  street  a  golden  green  avenue  leading  direct 
to  happiness  could  I  have  found  the  way  along  its  be- 
wildering straightness. 

If  youth  only  knew!  There  was  everywhere  to  go, 
everything  to  do,  every  happiness  to  claim.  Philadelphia 
waited,  the  Promised  Land  of  action  and  romance,  had  I 
not  been  hide-bound  by  Philadelphia  conventions,  ab- 
sorbed in  Philadelphia  ideals,  disdaining  all  others  with  the 
intolerance  of  my  years.  According  to  these  conventions 
and  ideals,  there  was  but  one  adventure  for  the  Philadel- 
phia girl  who  had  finished  her  education  and  arrived  at  the 
appointed  age — the  social  adventure  of  coming  out. 


CHAPTER  VI :  THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE 

I 

LET  me  say  at  once  that  I  know  |io  adventure  is  more 
important  for  the  Philadelphian,  and  that  mine 
f      was  scarcely  worth  the  name  as  these  things  go 
in  Philadelphia. 

It  is  the  one  adventure  that  should  be  roses  all  the  way, 
but  for  me  it  was  next  to  no  roses  at  all.  To  begin  with, 
I  was  poor.  My  Father  had  lost  his  money  in  the  years  of 
upheaval  following  the  Civil  War  and  had  never  got  it 
back  again.  Nowadays  this  would  not  matter.  A  girl 
of  seventeen,  when  she  comes  home  from  school,  can  turn 
round,  find  something  to  do,  and  support  herself.  She 
could  in  the  old  days  too,  if  she  was  thrown  on  her  own 
resources.  I  had  friends  no  older  than  myself  who  taught, 
or  were  in  the  INIint — that  harbour  of  refuge  for  the  young 
or  old  Philadelj)hia  lady  in  reduced  circumstances.  But 
my  trouble  was  that  I  was  not  supposed  to  be  thrown  on 
my  own  resources.  A  Philadelphia  father  would  have  felt 
the  social  structure  totter  had  he  permitted  his  daughter 
to  work  as  long  as  he  was  alive  to  work  for  her.  When  he 
had  many  daughters  and  luck  went  against  him,  the  ad- 
vantage of  this  attitude  was  less  obvious  to  them  than  to 
him.  Exemplary  as  was  the  theory,  which  I  applaud  my 
Father  for  acting  up  to  since  it  happened  to  be  his,  it  had 

130 


THE  CUSTOMS  HOUSE 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE  133 

its  inconvenience  when  put  into  practice.  To  be  guarded 
from  the  hardship  of  labour  by  the  devoted  father  did  not 
always  put  money  into  the  daughter's  pocket. 

Had  I  been  more  at  home  in  Philadelphia,  my  poverty 
might  not  have  stood  so  much  in  my  light.  A  hundred 
years  before  Gouverneur  Morris  had  praised  Philadelphia, 
which  in  its  respect  for  "  virtuous  poverty  "  he  thought  so 
much  more  generous  than  other  capitals  where  social  splen- 
dour was  indispensable,  and  in  this  the  town  had  not 
changed.  It  was  to  Philadelphia's  credit  that  a  girl's  social 
success  did  not  depend  on  the  length  of  her  dressmaker's 
bill  or  the  scale  of  her  entertaining.  More  than  one  as  poor 
as  I  would  have  a  different  story  to  tell.  But  I  suffered 
from  having  had  no  social  training  or  apprenticeship.  The 
Convent  had  been  concerned  in  preparing  me  for  society 
in  the  next  world,  not  in  this,  and  I  had  stayed  in  the 
Convent  too  long  to  make  the  many  friendships  that  do 
more  than  most  things  to  launch  a  girl  on  her  social  career 
^too  long,  for  that  matter,  to  know  what  society  meant. 

It  was  a  good  thing  that  I  did  not  know,  did  not  realize 
what  was  ahead  of  me,  that  I  allowed  myself  to  be  led 
like  a  Philadelphian  to  the  slaughter,  for  a  little  experience 
of  society  is  good  for  everybody.  Unless  men  are  to  live 
like  brutes — ^or  like  monks — they  must  establish  some  sort 
of  social  relations,  and  if  the  social  game  is  played  at  all, 
it  should  be  according  to  the  rules.  Nowhere  are  the  rules 
so  rigorous  as  in  Philadelphia,  nowhere  in  America  based 
upon  more  inexorable,  as  well  as  dignified,  traditions,  and 


134  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

1  do  not  doubt  that  because  of  the  stumbHng  blocks  in 
my  path,  I  learned  more  about  them  than  the  Philadel- 
phia girl  whose  path  was  rose-strewn.  Were  history  my 
mission,  it  would  be  amusing  to  trace  these  traditions  to 
their  source — first  through  the  social  life  of  the  Friends 
who,  however,  are  so  exclusive  that  slwuld  this  part  of  the 
story  ever  be  told,  whether  as  romance  or  history,  it  must 
come  from  the  inside;  and  then,  through  the  gaieties  of  the 
World's  People  who  flatter  themselves  they  are  as  exclu- 
sive, and  who  have  the  name  for  it,  and  whose  exclusiveness 
is  wholesale  license  compared  to  that  of  the  Friends: — 
through  the  two  distinct  societies  that  have  lived  and 
flourished  side  by  side  ever  since  Philadelphia  was.  But 
my  concern  is  solely  with  the  gaieties  as  I,  individually, 
shared  in  them.  Now  that  I  have  outlived  the  discomforts 
of  the  experience,  I  can  flatter  myself  that,  in  my  small, 
insignificant  fashion,  I  was  helping  to  carry  on  old  and 
fine  traditions. 

II 

The  most  serious  of  these  discomforts  arose  from  the 
question  of  clothes,  a  terrifying  question  under  the  exist- 
ing conditions  in  the  Third  Street  house,  involving  more 
industrious  dress-making  upstairs  in  the  third  story  front 
bedroom  than  I  cared  about,  and  a  waste  of  energies  that 
should  have  been  directed  into  more  profitable  channels. 
I  sewed  badly  and  was  conscious  of  it.  At  the  Convent, 
except  for  the  necessity  of  darning  my  stockings,  I  had 


w 


Vi\%^^^C^ 


UNDER  BROAD  STREET  STATION  AT  FIFTEENTH  STREET 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE  137 

been  as  free  from  this  sort  of  toiling  as  a  lily  of  the  field, 
and  yet  I  too  had  gone  arrayed,  if  hardly  with  the  same 
conspicuous  success,  and,  in  my  awkward  hands,  the  white 
tarlatan — who  wears  tarlatan  now? — ^and  the  cheap  silk 
from  Second  Street,  which  composed  my  coming  out  trous- 
seau, were  not  growing  into  such  things  of  beauty  as  to 
reconcile  me  to  my  new  task. 

As  unpleasant  were  the  preliminary  lessons  in  dancing- 
forced  upon  me  by  my  family  when,  in  my  pride  of  recent 
graduation  with  honours,  it  offended  me  to  be  thought 
by  anybody  in  need  of  learning  anything.  One  evening 
every  week  during  a  few  months,  two  or  three  friends 
and  cousins  joined  me  in  the  Third  Street  parlour  to  be 
drilled  into  dancing  shape  for  coming  out  by  Madame 
Martin,  the  large,  portly  Frenchwoman  who,  in  the  same 
crinoline  and  heelless,  sidelaced  shoes,  taught  generations 
of  Philadelphia  children  to  dance.  Even  the  Convent 
could  not  do  without  her,  though  there,  to  avoid  the  sin- 
fulness of  "  round  dances,"  we  had,  under  her  tuition, 
waltzed  and  polkaed  hand  in  hand,  a  method  which  my 
family  feared,  if  not  corrected,  might  lead  to  my  disgrace. 

I  seem  rather  a  pathetic  figure  as  I  see  myself 
obediently  stitching  and  practising  my  steps  without  an 
idea  of  the  true  meaning  and  magnitude  of  the  adventure 
I  was  getting  ready  for,  or  a  chance  of  being  set  about  it 
in  the  right  way.  That  right  way  would  have  been  for 
somebody  to  give  a  party  or  a  dance  or  a  reception  espe- 
cially for  me  to  come  out  at.     But  nobody  among  my 


138  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

friends  and  relations  was  obliging  enough  to  accept  the 
responsibility,  and  at  home  my  Father  could  not  get  so 
far  as  to  think  of  it.  He  would  have  needed  too  disastrous 
a  panic  in  Third  Street  to  provide  the  money.  Madame 
Martin's  lessons  were  already  an  extravagance  and  when, 
on  top  of  them,  he  had  gone  so  far  as;  to  pay  for  my  sub- 
scription to  the  Dancing  Class,  and,  in  a  cabless  town, 
for  the  carriage,  fortunately  shared  with  friends,  to  go  to 
it  in,  he  had  done  all  his  bank  account  allowed  him  to  do 
to  start  me  in  life. 

It  would  be  as  useful  to  explain  that  the  sun  rises  in 
the  east  and  sets  in  the  west  as  to  tell  a  Philadelphian  that 
the  Dancing  Class  to  which  I  refer  was  not  of  the  variety 
presided  over  by  Madame  Martin,  but  one  to  which  Phila- 
delphians  went  to  make  use  of  just  such  lessons  as  I  had 
been  struggling  with  for  weeks.  The  origin  of  its  name 
I  never  knew,  I  never  asked,  the  Dancing  Class  being  one 
of  the  Philadelphia  institutions  the  Philadelphian  took 
for  granted :  then,  as  it  always  had  been  and  still  is,  I  be- 
lieve, a  distinguished  social  function  of  the  year.  To 
belong  to  it  was  indispensable  to  the  Philadelphian  with 
social  pretensions.  It  was  held  every  other  Monday,  if  I 
remember — to  think  I  should  have  a  doubt  on  a  subject 
of  such  importance ! — and  the  first  of  the  series  was  given 
so  early  in  the  winter  that  with  it  the  season  may  be  said 
to  have  opened.  Perhaps  this  fact  helped  my  family  to 
decide  that  it  was  at  the  Dancing  Class  I  had  best  make 
my  first  appearance. 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE  139 

III 

Youth  is  brave  out  of  sheer  ignorance.  When  the 
moment  came,  it  never  occurred  to  me  to  hesitate  or  to 
consider  the  manner  of  my  introduction  to  the  world.  I 
was  content  that  my  Brother  should  be  my  sole  chaperon. 
I  rather  liked  myself  in  ni)^  home-made  white  tarlatan,  feel- 
ing very  much  dressed  in  my  first  low  neck.  I  entertained 
no  misgivings  as  to  the  fate  awaiting  me,  imagining  it 
as  inevitable  for  a  girl  who  was  "  out  "  to  dance  and  have 
a  good  time  as  for  a  bird  to  fly  once  its  wings  were  spread. 
If  there  were  men  to  dance  with,  what  more  was  needed? 
— it  never  having  entered  into  my  silly  head  that  it  was 
the  girl's  sad  fate  to  have  to  wait  for  the  man  to  ask  her, 
and  that  sometimes  the  brute  didn't. 

I  had  to  go  no  fiu'ther  than  the  dressing-room  at  the 
Natatorium,  where  the  Dancing  Class  then  met,  to  learn 
that  society  was  not  so  simple  as  I  thought.  I  have  since 
been  to  many  strange  lands  among  many  strange  people, 
but  never  have  I  felt  so  much  of  a  stranger  as  when  I,  a 
Philadelphian  born,  doing  conscientiously  what  Philadel- 
phia expected  of  me,  was  suddenly  dropped  down  into 
the  midst  of  a  lot  of  Philadelphia  girls  engaged  in  the 
same  duty.  There  was  a  freemasonry  among  them  I  could 
not  help  feeling  right  away — the  freemasonry  that  went 
deeper  than  the  chance  of  birth  and  the  companionship  of 
duty — the  freemasonry  that  came  from  their  all  having 
grown  up  together  since  their  perambulator  days  in  Ritten- 


140  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

house  Square,  having  learned  to  dance  together,  gone  to 
children's  parties  together,  studied  at  Miss  Irwin's  school 
together,  spent  the  summer  by  the  sea  and  in  the  moun- 
tains together,  in  a  word,  from  their  having  done  every- 
thing together  until  they  were  united  by  close  bonds,  the 
closer  for  being  undefinable,  that  I,  Convent  bred,  with  not 
an  idea,  not  a  habit,  not  a  point  of  view,  in  common  with 
them,  could  not  break  through.  I  never  have  got  quite 
over  the  feeling,  though  time  has  modified  it.  There  is  no 
loneliness  like  the  loneliness  in  a  crowd,  doubly  so  if  all  the 
others  in  the  crowd  know  each  other.  In  the  dressing-room 
that  first  evening  it  was  so  overwhelming  to  discover  my- 
self entirely  out  of  it  where  I  should  have  been  entirely  in, 
that,  without  the  stay  and  support  of  my  friend,  of  old  the 
Prince  of  Deimiark  to  my  Ghost  of  Hamlet's  Father,  and 
her  sister,  who  had  come  out  under  more  favourable  con- 
ditions, I  do  not  think  I  could  have  gone  a  step  further 
in  the  great  social  adventure. 

As  it  was,  with  my  heart  in  my  boots,  my  hand  trem- 
bling on  my  Brother's  arm,  to  the  music  of  Hassler's  band, 
I  entered  the  big  bare  hall  of  the  Natatorium,  and  was  out 
with  no  more  fuss  and  with  nobody  particularly  excited 
about  it  save  myself. 

Things  were  a  little  better  once  away  from  the  dress- 
ing-room. ]\Iy  Brother  was  gay,  had  been  out  for  two  or 
three  years,  knew  everybody.  If  he  could  not  introduce 
me  to  the  women  he  could  introduce  the  men  to  me,  and 
the  freemasonry  existing  among  them  from  their  all  having 


THE  PHILADELPHIA  CLUB 

THIRTEENTH  AND  WALNUT  STREETS 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE  143 

gone  to  the  Episcopal  Academy  and  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania  together,  from  their  all  having  played  cricket 
and  baseball  and  football,  or  gone  hunting  together,  from 
their  all  belonging  to  the  same  clubs,  was  not  the  kind  from 
which  I  need  suffer.  Besides,  those  were  the  days  when  it 
was  easy  for  the  Philadelphia  girl  to  get  to  know  men,  to 
make  friends  of  them,  without  the  Philadelphia  gossip 
pouncing  upon  her  and  the  Philadelphia  father  asking 
them  their  intentions — they  could  call  upon  her  as  often 
as  they  liked  and  the  Philadelphia  father  would  retreat 
from  the  front  and  back  parlours,  she  could  go  out  alone 
with  them  and  the  Philadelphia  father  would  not  interfere, 
knowing  they  had  been  brought  up  to  see  in  themselves 
her  protectors,  especially  appointed  to  look  out  for  her. 
Some  signs  of  change  I  might  have  discerned  had  I  been 
observant.  More  than  the  five  o'clock  tea  affectation  was 
to  come  of  the  new  coquetting  with  English  fashions. 
Enough  had  already  come  for  me  to  know  that  if  my 
Brother  now  and  then  asked  me  to  go  to  the  theatre,  it  was 
not  for  the  pleasure  of  my  company,  but  because  a  girl 
he  wanted  to  take  would  not  accept  if  he  did  not  provide  a 
companion  for  the  sake  of  the  proprieties.  I  am  sure  the 
old  Philadelphia  way  was  the  most  sensible.  Certainly 
it  was  the  most  helpful  if  you  happened  to  be  a  girl  com- 
ing out  with  next  to  no  friends  among  the  women  in  what 
ought  to  have  been  your  own  set,  with  no  chaperon  to  see 
that  you  made  them,  and,  at  the  Dancing  Class,  with  no 
hostess  to  keep  a   protecting  eye  on  you  but,   instead. 


144  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

patronesses  too  absorbed  in  their  triumphs  to  notice  the 
less  fortunate  straggling  far  behind. 

Well,  anyway,  if  honesty  forbids  me  to  call  myself  a 
success,  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  remember  that  I  did  not  have 
to  play  the  wall-fiower,  which  I  would  have  thought  the 
most  terrible  disaster  that  could  befall  me.  To  have  to 
sit  out  the  German  alone  would  have  been  to  sink  to  such 
depths  of  shame  that  I  never  afterwards  could  have  held 
up  my  head.  It  was  astonishing  what  mountains  of  de- 
spair we  made  of  these  social  molehills !  I  can  still  see  the 
sad  faces  of  the  girls  in  a  row  against  the  wall,  with  their 
air  of  announcing  to  all  whom  it  might  concern:  "  Here 
we  are,  at  your  service,  come  and  rescue  us!  "  But  there 
was  another  dreadful  custom  that  did  give  me  away  only 
too  often.  When  a  man  asked  a  girl  beforehand  to  dance 
the  German,  Philadelphia  expected  him  to  send  her  a  bunch 
of  roses :  always  the  same  roses — Boston  buds,  weren't  they 
called? — and  from  Pennock's  on  Chestnut  Street  if  he 
knew  what  was  what.  To  take  your  place  roseless  was  to 
proclaim  that  you  had  not  been  asked  until  the  eleventh 
hour.  It  was  not  pleasant.  However,  if  I  went  sometimes 
without  the  roses,  I  always  had  the  partner,  I  had  even 
moments  of  triumph  as  when,  one  dizzy  evening  before  the 
assembled  Dancing  Class,  I  danced  with  Willie  White. 

It  is  not  indiscreet  to  mention  so  great  a  person  by 
name  and,  in  doing  so,  not  presuming  to  use  it  so  familiarly 
— he  was  the  Dancing  Class,  as  far  as  I  know,  he  had  no 
other  occupation;  and  his  name  was  Willie ,  not  Williafn, 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE  145 

not  3Ir.  White.  Willie,  as  Philadelphians  said  it,  was 
a  title  of  honour,  like  the  Coeur  de  Lion  or  the  Petit 
Caporal  bestowed  upon  other  gi-eat  men — the  measure 
of  the  estimate  in  which  social  Philadelphia  held  him. 
Beau  iVash  in  the  Pump  Room  at  Bath  was  no  mightier 
power  than  Willie  White  in  the  Dancing  Class  at  the 
Natatorium.  He  ruled  it,  and  ruled  it  magnificently:  an 
autocrat,  a  tyrant,  under  whose  yoke  social  Philadelphia 
was  eager  to  thrust  its  neck.  What  he  said  was  law,  whom 
he  approved  could  enter,  whom  he  objected  to  was  without 
redress,  his  recognition  of  the  Philadelphian's  claims  to 
admission  was  a  social  passport.  He  saw  to  everything, 
he  led  the  German,  and  I  do  not  suppose  there  was  a  girl 
who,  at  her  first  Dancing  Class  her  first  winter,  did  not, 
at  her  first  chance,  take  him  out  in  the  German  as  her 
solemn  initiation.  That  is  how  I  came  to  enjoy  my 
triumph,  and  I  do  not  remember  repeating  it  for  he  never 
condescended  to  take  me  out  in  return.  But  still,  I  can 
say  that  once  I  danced  with  Willie  White  at  the  Dancing 
Class — And  did  I  once  see  Shelley  plain? 

IV 

There  were  other  powers,  as  I  was  made  quickly  to 
understand — not  only  the  powers  that  all  Biddies,  Cad- 
walladers,  Rushes,  Ingersolls,  Whartons,  in  a  word  all 
members  of  approved  Philadelphia  families  were  by  Phila- 
delphia right,  but  a  few  who  had  risen  even  higher  than 
that  splendid  throng  and  were  accepted  as  their  leaders. 

10 


146  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

It  was  not  one  of  the  most  brilliant  periods  in  the  social 
history  of  Philadelphia.  Mrs.  Rush  had  had  no  successor, 
no  woman  presided  over  what  could  have  been  given  the 
name  of  Salon  as  she  had.  Even  the  Wistar  parties,  ex- 
clusively for  men,  discontinued  during  the  upheaval  of 
the  Civil  War,  had  not  yet  been  revived.  But,  notwith- 
standing the  comparative  quiet  and  depression,  there  were 
a  few  shining  social  lights. 

Had  I  been  asked  in  the  year  of  my  coming  out  who 
was  the  greatest  woman  in  the  world,  I  should  have 
answered,  without  hesitation,  Mrs.  Bowie.  She,  too,  may  be 
mentioned  by  name  without  indiscretion  for  she,  too,  has 
become  historical.  She  was  far  from  beautiful  at  the  date 
to  which  I  refer,  she  was  no  longer  in  her  first  youth,  was 
inclined  to  stoutness  and  I  fear  had  not  learned  how  to  fight 
it  as  women  who  would  be  in  the  fashion  must  learn  to-day. 
She  was  not  rich  and  the  fact  is  worth  recording,  so  char- 
acteristic is  it  of  Philadelphia.  The  names  of  leaders 
of  societj'  in  near  New  York  usually  had  millions  attached 
to  them,  those  there  allowed  to  lead  paid  a  solid  price  for 
it  in  their  entertaining.  But  ISIrs.  Bowie's  power  depended 
upon  her  personal  fascination — with  family  of  course  to 
back  it — which  was  said  to  be  irresistible.  And  yet  not  to 
know  her  was  to  be  unknown.  Intimacy  with  her  was  to 
have  arrived.  At  least  a  bowing  acquaintance,  an  occa- 
sional invitation  to  her  house,  was  essential  to  success  or 
its  dawning.  She  entertained  modestly  as  far  as  I  could 
gather  from  my  experience, — as  far  as  I  can  now  depend 


FINISHING  THE  WEST  END  OF  THE  BELLEVUE-STRATl-'ORD 


^\ . 


perstj 


.  ..I'liiA 


vii  had  had 


ear  of 

the  world 

cion,  Mrs.  Bo- 

'Ktn  for  slic,  I 

'■  ■'   '   it  the  aatc 
..  .1 1     .... 


iicr  J> 


-r.  to-r!: 


lad  millions  attache  J 


tlcptlidttl 

■      .        ■    to 


orca- 


exper 


.,^,,-.rrA,!  iv..i:!/:.|  i.iMJl   iH'l   in  ilA'd  T&lW  :-lHT  OVSIBaWlH 


<  couki 
depeiul 


/if  \ 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE  147 

on  my  memory — gave  no  balls,  no  big  dinners;  if  there 
were  select  little  dinners,  I  was  too  young  and  insignificant 
to  hear  of  them.  I  never  got  farther  than  the  after- 
noon tea  to  which  everybody  was  invited  once  every 
winter,  a  comfortless  crush  in  her  small  house,  with 
next  to  nothing  to  eat  and  drink  as  things  to  eat  and  drink 
go  according  to  the  lavish  Philadelphia  standard.  But  that 
did  not  matter.  Nothing  mattered  except  to  be  there,  to 
be  seen  there.  I  was  tremendously  pleased  with  myself 
the  first  time  the  distinction  was  mine,  though  of  my 
presence  in  her  house  Mrs.  Bowie  was  no  doubt  amiably 
imconscious.  I  never  knew  her  to  recognize  me  out  of  it, 
though  I  sometimes  met  her  when  she  came  informally  to 
see  one  of  my  Aunts  who  was  her  friend,  or  to  give  me  the 
smile  at  the  Dancing  Class  that  would  have  raised  my 
drooping  spirits.  The  only  notice  she  ever  spared  me 
there  was  to  express  to  my  Brother — who  naturally, 
brother-like,  made  me  uncomfortable  by  reporting  it  to 
me — ^lier  opinion  of  my  poor,  unpretentious,  home-made. 
Second  Street  silk  as  an  example  of  the  absurdity  of  a 
long  train  to  dance  in,  which  shows  how  completely  she 
had  forgotten  who  I  was. 

Her  chief  rival,  if  so  exalted  a  personage  could  have  a 
rival,  was  Mrs.  Connor,  from  whom  also  a  smile,  a  recogni- 
tion, was  equivalent  to  social  promotion.  Her  fascination 
did  not  have  to  be  explained.  She  was  an  unqualified 
beauty,  though  the  vision  I  have  retained  is  of  beauty  in 
high-necked  blue  velvet  and  chinchilla,  which  I  could  not 


148  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

have  enjoyed  at  the  Dancing  Class  or  any  evening  party. 
I  realise  as  I  write  that  in  the  details  of  Philadelphia's 
social  history  1  would  come  out  badh'  from  too  rigid  an 
examination. 

V 
To  Mrs.  Connor's  I  was  never  asked  with  or  without 
the  crowd.  But  other  houses  were  opened  to  me,  other 
invitations  came,  for,  if  I  had  not  friends,  my  familj'^  had. 
My  white  tarlatan  and  my  Second  Street  silk  had  grown 
shabby  before  the  winter  was  half  over.  At  many  parties 
I  got  to  know  what  a  delightful  thing  a  Philadelphia  party 
was,  and  if  I  had  gone  to  one  instead  of  many  I  should 
have  known  as  well.  Philadelphia  had  a  standard  for  its 
parties  as  for  everything,  and  to  deviate  from  this 
standard,  to  attempt  originality,  to  invent  the  "  freak  " 
entertainments  of  New  York,  would  have  been  excessively 
bad  form.  The  same  card  printed  by  Dreka  requested  the 
pleasure  of  your  company  to  the  same  Philadelphia  house 
— the  Philadelphia  hostess  would  not  have  stooped  to  invite 
you  to  the  Continental  or  the  Girard,  the  LaPierre  House 
or  the  Colonnade,  which  were  the  Bellevue  and  the  Ritz 
of  my  day — where  you  danced  in  the  same  spacious  front 
and  back  parlours,  with  the  same  crash  on  the  floor,  to  the 
same  music  by  Hassler's  band;  where  you  ate  the  same 
Terrapin,  Croquettes,  Chicken  Salad,  Oysters,  Boned 
Turkey,  Ice-cream,  little  round  Cakes  with  white  icing  on 
top,  and  drank  the  same  Fish-House  Punch  provided  by 
the  same  Augustine;  where  the  same  Cotillon  began  at 


THE  NEW  RITZ-CARLTON;  THE  FINISHING  TOUCHES 

THE  WALNUT  STREET  ADDITION  HAS  SINCE  BEEN  MADE 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE  151 

the  same  hour  with  the  same  figures  and  the  same  favours 
and  the  same  partners ;  where  there  was  the  same  dressing- 
room  in  the  second  story  front  and  the  same  Philadelphia 
girls  who  froze  me  on  my  arrival  and  on  my  departure. 
There  was  no  getting  away  from  the  same  people  in  Phila- 
delphia. That  was  the  worst  of  it.  The  town  was  big 
enough  for  a  chance  to  meet  different  people  in  different 
houses  every  evening  in  the  week,  but  by  that  arbitrary 
boundary  of  "  Chestnut,  Walnut,  Spruce  and  Pine,"  it 
has  made  itself  socially  into  a  village  with  the  pettiness  and 
limitations  of  village  life.  I  have  never  wondered  that 
Philadelphians  are  as  cordial  to  strangers  as  everybodj'^ 
who  ever  came  to  Philadelphia  knows  them  to  be — that 
Philadelphia  doors  are  as  hospitable  as  Thackeray  once  de- 
scribed them.  Philadelphians  have  reason  to  rejoice  and 
make  the  most  of  it  when  occasionally  they  see  a  face  they 
have  not  been  seeing  regularly  at  every  party  they  have 
been  to,  and  hear  talk  they  have  not  listened  to  all  their 
lives. 

Sometimes  it  was  to  the  afternoon  reception  the  card 
engraved  by  Dreka  invited  me,  and  then  again  it  was  to 
meet  the  same  people  and — in  the  barbarous  mode  of  the 
day — to  eat  the  same  Croquettes,  Chicken  Salad,  Terra- 
pin, Boned  Turkey,  Ice-cream,  and  little  round  Cakes 
with  white  icing  on  top,  and  to  drink  the  same  Punch  from 
Augustine's  at  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and  at  least 
risk  digestion  in  a  good  cause.  But  rarely  did  the  card 
engraved  by  Dreka  invite  me  to  dinner,  and  I  could  not 


152  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

have  been  invited  to  anything  I  Hked  better.  I  have 
always  thought  dinner  the  most  civihzed  form  of  enter- 
tainment. It  may  have  been  an  entertaimnent  Phila- 
delphia preferred  to  reserve  for  my  elders,  and,  if  I 
am  not  mistaken,  the  most  formal  dinners,  or  dinners 
with  any  pretence  to  being  public,  were  then  usually  men's 
affairs,  just  as  the  Saturday  Club,  and  the  Wistar  parties 
had  been,  and  the  Clover  Club,  and  the  Fish-House  Club 
were:  from  them  women  being  as  religiously  excluded  as 
from  the  dinners  of  the  City  Companies  in  London,  or 
from  certain  monasteries  in  Italy  and  the  East.  Indeed, 
as  I  look  back,  it  seems  to  me  that  woman's  social  presence 
was  correct  only  in  private  houses  and  at  private  gather- 
ings. Nothing  took  away  my  breath  so  completely  on 
going  back  to  Philadelphia  after  my  long  absence  as  the 
Country  Clubs  where  men  and  women  now  meet  and  share 
their  amusements,  if  it  was  not  the  concession  of  a  dining- 
room  to  women  by  a  Club  like  the  Union  League  that,  of 
old,  was  in  my  esteem  as  essentially  masculine  as  the  Phila- 
delphia Lady  thought  the  sauces  at  Blossom's  Hotel  in 
Chester. 

But  there  were  plenty  of  other  things  to  do  which  I  did 
with  less  rather  than  more  thoroughness.  I  paid  midday 
visits,  wondering  why  duty  should  have  set  me  so  irksome 
a  task.  I  received  with  friends  on  New  Year's  Day — an 
amazing  day  when  men  paid  off  their  social  debts  and 
made,  at  some  houses,  their  one  call  of  the  year,  joining 
together  by  twos  and  threes  and  fours  to  charter  a  car- 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE  153 

riage,  or  they  would  never  have  got  through  their  round, 
armed  with  all  their  courage  either  to  refuse  positively  or 
to  accept  everywhere  the  glass  of  Madeira  or  Punch  and 
the  usual  masterpiece  from  Augustine's.  It  was  another 
barbarous  custom,  but  an  old  Philadelphia  custom,  and 
Philadelphia  has  lost  so  many  old  customs  that  I  could 
have  wished  this  one  spared.  I  went  to  the  concerts  of 
the  Orpheus  Club.  I  went  to  the  Opera  and  the  Theatre 
when  I  was  asked,  M^hich  was  not  often.  I  passed  with  the 
proper  degree  of  self-consciousness  the  Philadelphia  Club 
at  Thirteenth  and  Walnut,  the  same  row  of  faces  always 
looking  out  over  newspapers  and  magazines  from  the 
same  row  of  windows.  And  I  did  a  great  many  things 
that  were  pleasant  and  a  great  many  more  that  were  un- 
pleasant, conscientiously  rejecting  nothing  social  I  was 
told  to  do  when  the  opportmiity  to  do  it  came  my  way. 
But  it  all  counted  for  nothing  weighed  in  the  balance  with 
the  one  thing  I  did  not  do — I  never  went  to  the  Assembly. 


CHAPTER  VII:    THE  SOCIAL 
ADVENTURE:  THE  ASSEMBLY 


I  AM  too  good  a  Philadelphian  to  begin  to  talk  about 
the  Assembly  in  the  middle  of  a  chapter.  It  holds 
a  jjlace  apart  in  the  social  life  of  Philadelphia  of 
which  annually  it  is  the  supreme  moment,  and  in  my  record 
of  my  experiences  of  this  life,  however  imperfect,  I  can 
treat  it  with  no  less  consideration.  It  must  have  a  chapter 
apart. 

To  go  to  the  Assembly  was  the  one  thing  of  all  others 
I  wanted  to  do,  not  only  on  the  general  principle  that  the 
thing  one  wants  most  is  the  thing  one  cannot  have,  but 
because  to  go  to  the  Assembly  was  the  thing  of  all  others 
I  ought  to  have  done.  There  could  be  no  question  of  that. 
You  were  not  really  out  in  Philadelphia  if  you  did  not 
go;  only  the  Friends  could  afford  not  to.  And  Ameri- 
cans from  other  towns  felt  much  the  same  way  about 
it,  they  felt  they  were  not  anybody  if  they  were  not  in- 
vited, and  they  moved  heaven  and  earth  for  an  invitation, 
and  prized  it,  when  received,  as  highly  as  a  pedigree.  A 
few  honoured  guests  were  always  at  the  Assembly. 

Philadelphians  who  are  not  on  the  Assembly  list  may 
pretend  to  laugh  at  it,  to  despise  it,  to  sneer  at  the  snob- 

154 


■s^   '^. 


h}^Hi 


THE  HALL,  STENTON 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE:  THE  ASSEMBLY  157 

bishness  of  people  who  endeavour  to  draw  a  social  line 
in  a  country  where  everybody  is  as  good  as  everybody  else 
and  where  those  on  the  right  side  may  look  down  but  those 
on  the  wrong  will  not  be  induced  to  look  up.  And  not  one 
among  those  who  laugh  and  sneer  would  not  jump  at  the 
chance  to  get  in,  were  it  given  them,  at  the  risk  of  being 
transformed  into  snobs  themselves.  For  the  Assembly 
places  the  Philadelphian  as  nothing  else  can.  It  gives  him 
what  the  German  gets  from  his  quarterings  or  the  Briton 
from  an  invitation  to  Court.  The  Dancing  Class  had  its 
high  social  standard,  it  required  grandfathers  as  cre- 
dentials before  admission  could  be  granted,  the  archives 
of  the  Historical  Society  of  Pensylvania  supplied  no  more 
authoritative  assurance  of  Philadelphia  respectability  than 
its  subscription  list,  but  the  Dancing  Class  was  lax  in 
its  standard  compared  to  the  Assembly.  I  am  not  sure 
what  was  the  number,  what  the  quality,  of  ancestors  the 
Assembly  exacted,  but  I  know  that  it  was  as  inexorable  in 
its  exactions  as  the  Council  of  Ten.  It  would  have  been 
easier  for  troops  of  camels  to  pass  through  the  eye  of  a 
needle  than  for  one  Philadelphian  north  of  Market  Street 
to  get  through  the  Assembly  door.  I  am  told  that  matters 
are  worse  to-day  when  Philadelphia  society  has  increased 
in  numbers  until  new  limits  must  be  set  to  the  Assembly 
lest  it  perish  of  its  own  unwieldiness.  The  applicants  must 
produce  not  only  forefathers  but  fathers  and  mothers  on 
the  list,  and  the  Philadelphian  whose  name  was  there  more 
than  a  century  and  a  half  ago  cannot  make  good  his  rights 


158  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

if  his  parents  neglected  to  establish  theirs.  And  to  be  re- 
fused is  not  merely  humiliation,  but  humiliation  with  Phila- 
delphia for  witness,  and  the  misery  and  shame  that  are  the 
burden  of  the  humiliated. 

It  is  foolish,  I  admit,  society  is  too  light  a  matter  to 
suffer  for;  it  is  cruel,  for  the  social  woihnd  goes  deep.  But 
were  it  ten  times  more  foolish,  ten  times  more  cruel,  I 
would  not  have  it  otherwise.  Philadelphians  preserve  their 
State  House,  their  Colonial  mansions  and  churches;  why 
should  they  not  be  as  careful  of  their  Assembly,  since  it 
has  as  historic  a  background  and  as  fine  Colonial  and 
Revolutionary  traditions  ?  They  are  proud  of  having  their 
names  among  those  who  signed  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence; why  should  they  not  take  equal — or  greater — 
pride  in  figuring  among  the  McCalls  and  Willings  and 
Shippens  and  Sims  and  any  number  of  others  on  the  first 
Assembly  lists,  since  these  are  earlier  in  date?  Besides, 
to  such  an  extremity  have  the  changes  of  the  last  quarter 
of  a  century  driven  the  Philadelphian  that  he  must  make 
a  good  fight  for  survival  in  his  own  town.  When  I  think 
of  how  mere  wealth  is  taking  possession  of  "  Chestnut, 
Walnut,  Spruce  and  Pine,"  how  uptown  is  marrying  into 
it,  how  the  Jew  and  the  alien  are  forcing  their  way  in,  I 
see  in  loyalty  to  the  traditions  of  the  Assembly  of  Phila- 
delphian's  strongest  defence  of  the  social  rights  which  are 
his  by  inheritance.  Should  he  let  go,  what  would  there  be 
for  him  to  catch  on  to  again? 


1* 


-:sr  X 


'PROCLAIM  LIBERTY  THROUGHOUT  ALL  THE  LAND  UNTO  ALL  THE  INHABITANTS  THEREOF" 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE:  THE  ASSEMBLY  161 

It  would  be  different  if  what  Philadelphia  was  getting 
in  exchange  were  finer,  or  as  fine.  But  it  is  not.  The 
old  exclusiveness,  with  its  follies,  was  better,  more  amus- 
ing, than  the  new  tendency  to  do  away  with  everything 
that  gave  Philadelphia  society  its  character.  It  was  the 
charm  and  the  strength  of  Philadelphia  society  that  it  had 
a  character  of  its  own  and  was  not  just  like  Boston  or  New 
York  or  Baltimore  society.  Nobody,  however  remote  was 
their  mission  from  social  matters,  could  visit  Philadelphia 
without  being  impressed  by  this  difference,  whether  it  was 
to  discover,  with  John  Adams,  that  Philadelphians  had 
their  particular  way  of  being  a  happy,  elegant,  tranquil, 
polite  people,  or,  with  so  unlikely  an  observer  as  JNIatthew 
Arnold,  that  "  the  leading  families  in  Philadelphia  were 
much  thought  of,"  and  that  Philadelphia  names  saying 
nothing  to  an  Englishman  said  everj^hing  to  every  Ameri- 
can. Who  you  were  counted  in  Philadelphia,  as  what 
you  knew  in  Boston,  or  what  you  were  worth  in  New 
York,  and  there  was  not  an  American  of  old  who  did  not 
accept  the  fact  and  respect  it.  Philadelphia  society  clung 
to  the  Philadelphia  surface  of  tranquillity,  of  untroubled 
repose  whatever  might  be  going  on  beneath  it,  and  in  my 
time  I  would  not  like  to  say  how  disturbing  and  agitating 
were  the  scandals  and  intrigues  that  were  said  to  be  going 
on.  They  were  rarely  made  public.  It  was  not  in  Phila- 
delphia as  in  London  where  next  to  everybody  you  meet 

has  been  or  is  about  to  be  divorced,  though  it  might  be 
11 


162  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

that  next  to  everybody  you  met  was  not  making  it  a 
practice  to  keep  to  the  straight  and  narrow  path,  to  be 
as  innocent  as  everybody  looked.  Logan  Square  could 
have  told  tales,  if  the  Divorce  Court  could  not. 

But  now  Philadelphia  has  strayed  from  its  characteris- 
tic exclusiveness ;  gone  far  to  get  rid  oi  even  the  air  of  tran- 
quillity. With  the  modern  "  Peggy  Shippen  "  and  "  Sally 
Wister  "  alert  to  give  away  its  affairs  in  the  columns  of  the 
daily  paper,  it  could  not  keep  its  secrets  to  itself  if  it 
wanted  to.  And  it  does  not  seem  to  want  to — that  is  the 
saddest  part  of  the  whole  sad  transformation.  It  rather 
likes  the  world  outside  to  know  what  it  is  doing  and,  worse, 
it  takes  that  world  as  its  model.  Its  aim  apparently  is  to 
show  that  it  can  be  as  like  every  other  town  as  two  peas, 
so  that,  drinking  tea  to  music  at  the  Bellevue,  dancing  at 
the  Ritz,  lunching  and  dining  and  playing  golf  and  polo 
at  the  Country  Clubs,  the  visitor  can  comfortably  for- 
get he  is  not  at  home  but  in  Philadelphia.  The  youth 
of  Philadelphia  have  become  eager  to  desert  the  Episcopal 
Academy  and  the  University  for  Groton  or  St.  Paul's, 
Harvard  or  Yale,  in  order  that  they  may  be  trained  to  be 
not  Philadelphians  but,  as  they  imagine,  men  of  the  world, 
forgetting  the  distinction  there  has  hitherto  been  in  being 
plain  Philadelphians.  At  the  moment  when  in  far  older 
towns  of  Europe  people  are  striving  to  recover  their 
character  by  reviving  local  costumes,  language,  and  cus- 
toms, Philadelphians  are  deliberately  throwing  theirs  away 
with  their  old  traditions.     The  Assembly  is  one  of  their 


1 


BED  ROOM,  STENTON   THE  HOME  OF  JAMES  LOGAN 


I 


f 


t 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE:  THE  ASSEMBLY  165 

few  rare  possessions  left,  and  strict  as  they  are  with  it  in 
one  way,  in  another  they  are  playing  fast  and  loose  with 
it,  holding  it,  as  if  it  were  a  mere  modern  dance,  at  a 
fashionable  hotel. 

II 

If  I  now  regret,  as  I  do,  never  having  gone  to  the 
Assembly,  it  is  because  of  all  that  it  represents,  all  that 
makes  it  a  classic.  But  at  the  time,  my  regret,  though  as 
keen,  was  because  of  more  personal  reasons,  I  could  have 
borne  the  historic  side  of  my  loss  with  equanimity,  it  was 
the  social  side  of  it  that  broke  my  heart.  I  have  had  many 
bad  quarters  of  an  hour  in  my  life,  but  few  as  poignant  as 
that  which  followed  the  appearance  at  our  front  door  of 
the  coloured  man  who  distributed  the  cards  for  the  As- 
sembly— far  too  precious  to  be  trusted  to  the  post — and 
who  came  to  leave  one  for  my  Brother.  It  was  an  injustice 
that  oppressed  me  with  a  sense  of  my  wrongs  as  a  woman 
and  might  have  set  me  window-smashing  had  window- 
smashing  as  a  protest  been  invented.  Why  should  the 
Assembly  be  so  much  easier  for  men?  My  Brother  had 
but  to  put  on  the  dress  suit  he  had  worn  it  did  not  matter 
how  many  years,  and  as  he  was,  like  every  other  American 
young  man,  at  work  and  an  independent  person  altogether 
— a  millionaire  I  saw  in  him — the  price  of  the  card  in  an 
annual  subscription  was  his  affair  and  nobody  else's.  But, 
in  my  case  the  price  was  not  my  affair.  I  had  not  a  cent 
to  call  my  own,  I  was  not  at  work,  I  was  denied  the  right 


166  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

to  work,  and,  the  Assembly  coming  fairly  late  in  the  sea- 
son, my  white  tarlatan  and  Second  Street  silk  showed  wear 
and  tear  that  unfitted  them  for  the  most  important  social 
function  of  the  winter.  Philadelphia  women  dressed 
simply,  it  is  true;  that  used  to  be  one  of  the  ways  the 
Quaker  influence  showed  itself;  th^y  boasted  then  that 
their  restraint  in  dress  distinguished  them  from  other 
American  women.  But  simplicity  does  not  mean  cheap- 
ness or  indifference.  The  Friends  took  infinite  pains  with 
their  soft  brown  and  silvery  grey  silks,  with  their  delicate 
fichus  and  Canton  shawls.  The  well-dressed  Philadel- 
phia woman  knows  what  she  has  to  pay  for  the  elegance 
of  her  simplicity.  And  the  Assembly  has  always  called  for 
the  finest  she  could  achieve,  from  the  day  when  Franklin 
was  made  to  feel  the  cost  to  him  if  his  daughter  was  to  have 
what  she  needed  to  go  out  "  in  decency  "  with  the  Wash- 
ingtons  in  Philadelphia. 

I  had  the  common  sense  to  understand  my  position  and 
not  to  be  misled  by  the  poverty-stricken,  but  irresistible 
Xancies  and  Dollies  who  were  enjoying  a  vogue  in  the 
novels  of  the  day  and  who  encircled  empty  bank  accounts 
and  big  families  with  the  halo  of  romance.  To  read  about 
the  struggles  with  poverty  of  the  irresistible  young  heroine 
might  be  amusing,  but  I  had  no  special  use  for  them  as  a 
personal  experience.  It  would  have  been  preposterous  for 
me  to  think  for  a  moment  that,  without  a  decent  gown, 
I  could  go  to  the  Assembly  and,  to  do  myself  justice,  I  did 
not  think  it.    But  by  this  time  I  knew  what  coming  out 


THE  TUNNEL  IN  THE  PARK 


>    t 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE:  THE  ASSEMBLY  169 

and  being  out  meant  and,  therefore,  I  appreciated  the 
social  drawback  it  must  be  for  me  not  to  be  able  to  go.  It 
explained,  as  nothing  hitherto  had,  how  far  I  was  from 
being  caught  up  in  the  whirl,  and  it  is  only  the  whirl  that 
keeps  one  going  in  society — that  makes  society  a  delightful 
profession,  and  I  think  I  realized  this  truth  better  than  the 
people  so  extravagantly  in  the  Philadelphia  whirl  as  to  have 
no  time  to  think  about  it.  All  that  winter  I  never  got 
to  the  point  of  being  less  concerned  as  to  where  the  next 
invitation  was  to  come  from  than  as  to  how  I  was  to  accept 
all  that  did  come.  There  is  no  use  denying  that  I  was  dis- 
appointed and  suffered  from  the  disappointment.  One 
pays  a  heavier  price  for  the  first  foolish  illusion  lost  than 
for  all  the  others  put  together,  no  matter  how  serious  they 
are. 

Ill 

When  the  season  was  over,  I  had  as  little  hope  of  keep- 
ing up  in  other  essential  ways.  If  society  then  adjourned 
from  Philadelphia  because  the  heat  made  it  impossible  to 
stay  at  home,  it  was  only  to  start  a  new  Philadelphia  on 
the  porch  of  Howland's  Hotel  at  Long  Branch  or,  as  it 
was  just  then  beginning  to  do,  at  Bar  Harbor  and  in  the 
camps  of  the  Adirondacks,  or,  above  all,  at  Narragan- 
sett.  "  It  may  be  accepted  as  an  incontrovertible  truth," 
Janvier  says  in  one  of  his  Philadelphia  stories,  "  that  a 
Philadelphian  of  a  certain  class  who  missed  coming  to  the 
Pier  for  August  would  refuse  to  believe,  for  that  year  at 


170  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

least,  in  the  alternation  of  the  four  seasons;  while  an  en- 
forced absence  from  that  damply  delightful  watering- 
place  for  two  successive  summers  very  probably  would 
lead  to  a  rejection  of  the  entire  Copernican  system."  If 
Philadelphians  went  abroad,  which  was  much  more  excep- 
tional then  than  now,  it  was  to  meet  each  other.  I  know 
hotels  in  London  to-day  where,  if  you  go  in  the  afternoon, 
it  is  just  like  an  afternoon  reception  in  Philadephia,  and 
hotels  in  Paris  where  at  certain  seasons  you  find  nobody 
but  Philadelphians  talking  Philadelphia,  though  the  Phila- 
delphian  has  not  disappeared  who  does  not  want  to  travel 
because  he  finds  Philadelphia  good  enough  for  him.  And 
it  has  always  been  like  that. 

But  I  could  not  follow  Philadelphia  society  in  the 
summer  time  any  more  than  I  could  go  with  it  to  the 
Assembly  in  the  winter.  I  had  reason  to  consider  myself 
fortunate  if  I  travelled  as  far  as  Mount  Airy  or  Chestnut 
Hill  out  of  the  red  brick  oven  Philadelphia  used  to  be — is 
now  and  ever  shall  be ! — from  June  to  September.  It  was 
an  event  if  I  got  off  with  the  crowd — the  linen-dustered, 
wilting-collared  crowds ;  surely  we  are  not  so  demoralized 
by  the  heat  nowadays  ? — to  Cape  May  or  Atlantic  City,  to 
enjoy  the  land  breeze  blowing,  from  over  the  Jersey 
swamps,  clouds  of  mosquitoes  before  it  so  that  nobody 
could  stir  out  of  doors  without  gloves  and  a  veil.  These, 
however,  were  not  the  summer  joys  society  demanded  of 
me.  The  further  I  went  into  the  social  game,  the  less  I 
got  from  it,  and  I  had  decided  that  for  the  poor  it  was  not 


~^-f'*i 


I 


THE  BOAT  HOUSES  ON  THE  SCHUYLKILL 


THE  SOCIAL  ADVENTURE:  THE  ASSEMBLY  173 

worth  the  candle  at  the  end  of  the  first  year, — ^or  was  it  the 
second?  That  I  should  be  uncertain  shows  how  little  my 
heart  was  in  the  business  of  going  out. 

I  did  not  necessarily  give  up  every  amusement  because 
I  did  not  go  out.  In  fact,  I  cannot  recall  a  dance  that 
amused  me  as  much  as  many  a  boating  party  on  the  Schuyl- 
kill in  the  gold  of  the  June  afternoon,  or  many  a  walking 
party  through  the  Park  in  the  starlit  summer  night.  There 
also  remained,  had  I  chosen,  the  staid  entertainment  of  the 
women  who,  for  one  reason  or  other,  had  retired  from  the 
gayer  round,  and  whose  amusements  consisted  of  more 
intimate  receptions,  teas,  without  number,  sewing  societies. 
And  it  was  the  period  when  Philadelphia  was  waking  up 
to  the  charms  of  the  higher  education  for  women, — to  the 
dissipations  of  "  culture."  I  had  friends  who  filled  their 
time  by  studying  for  the  examinations  Harvard  had  at  last 
condescended  to  allow  them  to  pass,  or  try  to  pass ;  others 
found  their  sober  recreation  by  qualifying  themselves  as 
teachers  and  teaching  in  a  large  society  formed  to  impart 
learning  by  correspondence :  all  these  women  keeping  their 
occupation  to  themselves  as  much  as  possible,  not  wishing 
to  make  a  public  scandal  in  Philadelphia  which  had  not 
accustomed  itself  to  the  spectacle  of  women  working  un- 
less compelled  to; — all  this  quite  outside  of  the  University 
set,  which  must  have  existed,  if  I  did  not  know  it,  as  the 
Bryn  Mawr  set  exists  to-day,  but  which,  as  far  as  my 
experience  went,  was  then  never  heard  of  except  by  the 
fortunate  and  privileged  few  who  belonged  to  it. 


174  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

But  this  new  amusement  required  effort,  and  experi- 
ence had  not  made  me  in  love  with  the  amusement  that  had 
to  be  striven  for,  that  had  to  be  paid  for  by  exertion  of  any 
kind.  There  was  an  interval  when  Philadelphia  would 
have  been  searched  in  vain  for  another  idler  as  confirmed 
as  I.  Having  found  nothing  to  do,  I  proceeded  to  do  it 
with  all  my  might.  I  stood  in  no  need  of  the  poet's  com- 
mand to  lean  and  loaf  at  my  ease,  though  I  am  afraid 
I  leaned  and  loafed  so  well  as  to  neglect  the  other  half 
of  his  precept  and  to  forget  to  invite  my  soul.  To  those 
years  I  now  look  back  as  to  so  much  good  time  lost  in  a 
working  life  all  to  short  at  the  best. 


i 


CHAPTER  VIII:  A  QUESTION  OF  CREED 

I 

I  MAY  not  have  understood  at  the  time,  but  I  must 
have  been  vaguely  conscious  that  if  so  often  I  felt 
myself  a  stranger  in  my  native  town,  it  was  not  only 
because  of  the  long  years  I  had  been  shut  up  in  boarding- 
school,  but  because  that  boarding-school  happened  to  be  a 
Convent. 

There  were  schools  in  Philadelphia  and  schools  out  of 
it  as  useful  as  Rittenhouse  Square  in  laying  the  founda- 
tion for  profitable  friendships.  Miss  Irwin's  furnished 
almost  as  good  social  credentials  as  a  Colonial  Governor  in 
the  family.  But  a  Philadelphia  Convent  did  the  other 
thing  as  successfully.  It  was  not  the  Convent  as  a  Con- 
vent that  was  objected  to.  In  Paris,  it  could  lend  distinc- 
tion: the  fact  that,  at  the  mature  age  of  six,  I  spent  a  year 
at  Conflans,  might  have  served  me  as  a  social  asset.  In 
Louisiana,  or  Maryland,  a  Philadelphia  girl  could  see  its 
door  close  upon  her,  and  not  despair  of  social  salvation. 
Everything  depended  upon  where  the  Convent  was.  In 
some  places,  it  had  a  social  standing,  in  others  it  had  none, 
and  Philadelphia  was  one  of  the  others.  In  France,  in 
Louisiana,  in  Maryland,  to  be  a  Catholic  was  to  be  at  the 
top  of  the  social  scale,  approved  by  society;  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, it  was  to  be  at  the  bottom,  despised  by  society. 

175 


176  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

This  was  another  Philadelphia  fact  I  accepted  on  faith. 
It  was  not  until  I  began  to  think  about  Philadelphia  that 
I  saw  how  consistent  Philadelphians  were  in  their  incon- 
sistency. Their  position  in  the  matter  was  what  their  past 
had  made  it,  and  the  inconsistency  is  in  their  greater  liberal- 
ity to-day.  For  Pennsylvania  has  oiever  been  Catholic, 
has  never  had  an  aristocratic  Catholic  tradition  like  Eng- 
land :  to  the  Friends  there,  all  the  aristocracy  of  the  tradi- 
tional kind  belongs.  The  people — the  World's  People — 
who  rushed  to  Pennsylvania  to  secure  for  themselves  the 
religious  liberty  William  Penn  offered  indiscriminately  to 
everybody,  found  they  could  not  enjoy  it  if  Catholics  were 
to  profit  by  it  with  them.  They  had  not  been  there  any  time 
when,  as  one  of  the  early  Friends  had  the  wit  to  see  and  to 
say,  they  "  were  surfeited  with  liberty,"  and  the  Friends, 
who  refused  to  all  sects  alike  the  privilege  of  expressing 
their  religious  fervour  in  wood  piles  for  witches  and  prison 
cells  for  heretics,  could  not  succeed  in  depriving  them  of 
their  healthy  religious  prejudice  which,  they  might  not 
have  been  able  to  explain  why,  concentrated  itself  upon  the 
Catholic.  Episcopalians  approved  of  a  doctrine  of  free- 
dom that  meant  they  could  build  their  own  churches  where 
they  would.  Presbyterians  and  Baptists  objected  so  little 
to  each  other  that,  for  a  while,  they  could  share  the  same 
pulpit.  ^Moravians  put  up  their  monasteries  where  it 
suited  them  best.  Mennonites  took  possession  of  German- 
town.  German  mystics  were  allowed  to  search  in  peace 
for  the  Woman  in  White  and  wait  hopefully  for  the 


A  QUESTION  OF  CREED  177 

^Millennium  on  the  banks  of  the  Wissahiekon.  Later  on 
Whitefield  set  the  whole  town  of  Philadelphia  to  singing 
psalms,  and  Philadelphia  refrained  from  interfering  with 
what  must  have  been  an  intolerable  nuisance.  Even  Jews 
were  welcome — their  names  are  among  early  legislators 
and  on  early  Assembly  lists.  Catholics,  alone,  they  all 
agreed,  had  no  right  to  any  portion  of  Penn's  gift,  and 
popular  opinion  is  often  stronger  than  the  law.  Whatever 
ill  will  they  had  to  spare  from  the  Catholics,  they  reserved 
for  the  Friends  to  whom  they  owed  everything — if  Penn- 
sylvania was  "  a  dear  Pennsylvania  "  to  Penn,  a  good  part 
of  the  blame  lay  with  the  "  drunken  crew  of  priests  "  and 
the  "  turbulent  churchmen  "  whom  he  denounced  in  one 
of  those  letters  to  Logan,  which  are  among  the  saddest 
ever  written  and  published  to  the  world. 

After  religious  passions  had  run  their  course,  the 
religious  prejudice  against  the  Catholic  was  handed  down 
as  social  prejudice,  which  was  all  it  was  in  my  day  when 
Philadelphians,  who  would  question  the  social  standing  of 
a  Catholic  in  Philadelphia  simply  because  he  was  a  Catho- 
lic, could  accept  him  without  question  in  the  Catholic  town 
of  Baltimore  or  New  Orleans  simply  because  he  was  one. 
The  Catholic  continued  to  pay  a  heavy  price  socially  for  his 
religion  in  Philadelphia  where  it  was  not  the  thing  to  be  a 
Catholic,  where  it  never  had  been  the  thing,  where  it  got  to 
be  less  the  thing  as  successive  Irish  emigrations  crowded 
the  Catholic  churches.  I  fancy  at  the  period  of  which  I 
am  writing  Philadelphians,  if  asked,  would  have  said  that 

12 


178  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Catholicism  was  for  Irish  servants — for  the  illiterate.  I 
remember  a  book  called  Kate  Vincent  I  used  to  read  at  a 
Protestant  Uncle's,  where  it  may  purposely  have  been 
placed  in  my  way.  Does  anybody  else  remember  it? — a 
story  of  school  life  with  a  heroine  of  a  school  girl  who,  in 
the  serene  confidence  of  her  sixteen  ov  seventeen  summers, 
refuted  all  the  learned  Doctors  of  the  Church  by  convicting 
a  poor  little  Irish  slavey  of  ignorance  for  praying  to  the 
Blessed  Virgin  and  the  Saints.  I  think  I  must  have  for- 
gotten it  with  many  foolish  books  for  children  read  in  my 
childhood  had  not  Kate  Vincent  been  so  like  Philadel- 
phians  in  her  calm  superiority,  though,  fortunately,  Phila- 
delphians  did  not  share  her  proselytising  fervour.  They 
went  to  the  other  extreme  of  lofty  indifference  and  for 
them  the  Catholic  churches  in  their  town  did  not  exist  any 
more  than  the  streets  of  little  two-story  houses  south  of 
Pine,  a  region  into  which  they  would  not  have  thought  of 
penetrating  except  to  look  up  somebody  who  worked  for 
them. 

II 

I  might  have  learned  as  much  during  my  holiday's  at 
my  Grandfather's  had  I  been  given  to  reflection  during  my 
early  years.  JVIy  Father  was  a  convert  with  the  convert's 
proverbial  ardour.  He  had  been  baptised  in  the  Convent 
chapel  with  my  Sister  and  myself — I  was  eight  years  old 
at  the  time — and  many  who  were  present  declared  it  the 
most  touching  ceremony  they  had  ever  seen.  However,  to 
the  family,  who  had  not  seen  it,  it  was  anything  but  touch- 


THE  PULPIT,  ST.  PETER'S 


^ 


A  QUESTION  OF  CREED  181 

ing.  They  were  all  good  members  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  and  had  been  since  they  landed  in  Virginia ;  more- 
over, one  of  my  Father's  brothers  was  an  Episcopal  clergy- 
man and  Head  Master  of  the  Episcopal  Academy,  Phila- 
delphia's bed-rock  of  religious  respectability.  The  bap- 
tism was  only  conditional,  for  the  Catholic  Church  baptizes 
conditionally  those  who  have  been  baptized  in  any  church 
before,  but  even  so  it  must  have  been  trying  to  them  as  a 
precaution  insolently  superfluous.  I  do  not  remember  that 
anything  v/as  ever  said,  or  suggested,  or  hinted.  But  there 
was  an  undercurrent  of  disapproval  that,  child  as  I  was,  I 
felt,  though  I  could  not  have  put  it  into  words.  One  thing 
plain  was  that  when  we  children  went  off  to  our  church 
with  my  Father,  we  were  going  where  nobody  else  in  my 
Grandfather's  house  went,  except  the  servants,  and  that, 
for  some  incomprehensible  reason,  it  was  rather  an  odd 
sort  of  thing  for  us  to  do,  making  us  different  from  most 
people  we  knew  in  Philadelphia. 

Nor  had  I  the  chance  to  lose  sight  of  this  difference 
at  the  Convent.  The  education  I  was  getting  there,  when 
not  devoted  to  launching  my  sovil  into  Paradise,  was  pre- 
paring me  for  the  struggle  against  the  temptations  of  the 
world  which,  from  all  I  heard  about  it,  I  pictured  as  a 
horrible  gulf  of  evil  yawning  at  the  Convent  gate,  ready 
to  swallow  me  up  the  minute  that  gate  shut  behind  me. 
To  face  it  was  an  ordeal  so  alarming  in  anticipation  that 
there  was  an  interval  when  I  convinced  myself  it  would  be 
infinitely  safer,  by  becoming  a  nun,  not  to  face  it  at  all. 


182  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

If  I  stopped  to  give  the  world  a  name,  it  was  bound  to 
be  Philadelphia,  the  place  in  which  I  was  destined  to  live 
upon  leaving  the  Convent.  I  knew  that  it  was  Protestant, 
as  we  often  prayed  for  the  conversion  of  its  people,  I  the 
harder  because  thej"^  included  my  relations  who  if  not  con- 
verted could,  my  catechism  taught  ipe,  be  saved  only  so 
as  by  the  invincible  ignorance  with  which  I  hardly  felt  it 
polite  to  credit  them.  To  what  other  conclusion  could  I 
come,  arguing  logically,  than  that  Philadelphia  was  the 
horrible  gulf  of  evil  yawning  for  me,  and  that  in  this  gulf 
Protestants  swarmed,  scattering  temptation  along  the  path 
of  the  Catholic  who  walked  alone  among  them? — an  idea 
of  Philadelphia  that  probably  would  have  surj)rised  no- 
body more  than  the  nuns  who  were  training  me  for  my 
life  of  struggle  in  it. 

The  gulf  of  the  world  did  not  seem  so  evil  once  it 
swallowed  me  up,  but  that  socially  the  Catholic  walked  in 
it  alone,  there  could  be  no  mistake.  When  eventually  I 
left  school  and  began  going  out  on  my  modest  scale,  I 
could  not  fail  to  see  that  the  people  I  met  in  church  were 
not,  as  a  rule,  the  people  I  met  at  the  Dancing  Class,  or 
at  parties,  or  at  receptions,  or  on  that  abominable  round  of 
morning  calls,  and  this  was  the  more  surprising  because 
Philadelphians  of  the  "  Chestnut,  Walnut,  Spruce  and 
Pine  "  set  were  accustomed  to  meeting  each  other  wher- 
ever they  went.  Except  for  the  small  group  of  those 
Philadelphia  families  of  French  descent  with  French 
names  who  were  not  descendants  of  the  Huguenots,  and 


A  QUESTION  OF  CREED  183 

here  and  there  a  convert  like  my  Father,  and  an  occasional 
native  Philadelphian  who,  unaccountably,  had  always  been 
a  Cathohc,  the  congregation,  whether  I  went  to  the 
Cathedral  or  St.  John's,  to  St.  Joseph's  or  St.  Patrick's, 
was  chiefly  Irish,  as  also  were  the  priests  when  they  were 
not  Italians. 

Fashion  sent  the  Philadelphian  to  the  Episcopal 
Church.  It  could  not  have  been  otherwise  in  a  town  as 
true  to  tradition  as  Philadelphia  had  not  ceased  to  be  in 
my  young  days.  No  sooner  had  Episcopalians  settled  in 
Philadelphia  than,  by  their  greater  grandeur  of  dress  and 
manner,  they  showed  the  greater  social  aspirations  they 
had  brought  with  them  from  the  other  side — the  English- 
man's confidence  in  the  social  superiority  of  the  Church  of 
England  to  all  religion  outside  of  it.  Presbyterians  are 
said  to  have  had  a  pretty  fancy  in  matters  of  wigs  and 
powdered  and  frizzled  hair,  which  may  also  have  been 
symbolic,  for  they  followed  a  close  fashionable  second. 
Baptists  and  Methodists,  on  the  contrary,  affected  to 
despise  dress  and,  while  I  cannot  say  if  the  one  fact  has 
anything  to  do  with  the  other,  I  knew  fewer  Baptists  and 
Methodists  than  Catholics.  By  my  time  the  belief  that  no 
one  could  be  "  a  gentleman  "  outside  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, or  its  American  offshoot,  was  stronger  than  ever,  and 
fashion  required  a  pew  at  St.  Mark's  or  Holy  Trinity  or 
St.  James's,  if  ancient  lineage  did  not  claim  one  at  St. 
Peter's  or  Christ  Church;  though  old-fashioned  people 
like  my  Grandfather  and  Grandmother  might  cling  blame- 


181  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

lessly  to  St.  Andrew's  which  was  highly  respectable,  if  not 
fashionable,  and  new-fashioned  people  might  brave  critic- 
ism with  the  Ritualists  at  St.  Clement's.  As  for  Catholics, 
a  pew  down  at  St.  Joseph's  in  Willing's  Alley  or,  worse 
still,  up  town  at  the  Cathedral  in  Logan  Square,  put  them 
out  of  the  reckoning,  at  a  hopeless  disadvantage  socially, 
however  better  off  they  might  be  for  it  spiritually.  That 
the  Cathedral  was  in  Logan  Square  was  in  itself  a  social 
offence  of  a  kind  that  society  could  not  tolerate.  At  the 
correct  churches  every  function,  every  meeting,  every 
Sunday-school,  every  pious  re-union,  as  well  as  every  ser- 
vice, became  a  fashionable  duty;  and  at  the  church  door 
after  service  on  Sundaj^  a  man  with  whom  one  had  danced 
the  night  before  might  be  picked  up  to  walk  on  Walnut 
Street  with,  which  was  a  social  observance  only  less  indis- 
pensable than  attendance  at  the  Assembly  and  the  Dancing- 
Class. 

I  recall  the  excitement  of  girls  of  my  age,  their  feel- 
ing that  they  had  got  to  the  top  of  everything,  the  first  time 
they  took  this  sacramental  walk,  if  not  with  a  man  which 
was  the  crowning  glory,  at  least  with  a  woman  who  was 
prominent,  or  successful,  in  society.  But  I  believe  I  could 
count  the  times  I  joined  in  the  Walnut  Street  procession 
on  Sunday  morning.  As  long  as  I  lived  in  Third  Street, 
my  usual  choice  of  a  church  lay  between  St.  Joseph's,  the 
Jesuit  church  in  Willing's  Alley  with  its  air  of  retirement, 
and  St.  Mary's  on  Fourth  Street,  where  the  orphans  used 
to  come  from  Seventh  and  Spruce  and  sometimes  sing  an 


I 


THE  CATHEDRAL,  LOGAN  SQUARE 


J 


A  QUESTION  OF  CREED  187 

anthem  that,  for  any  save  musical  reasons,  I  dehghted  in, 
and  where  we  had  a  pew.  After  we  moved  from  Third 
Street,  our  pew  was  at  the  Cathedral,  more  distinguished 
from  the  clerical  standpoint,  for  there  we  sat  under  the 
Bishop.  No  matter  which  our  church.  High  Mass  was 
long :  I  could  not  have  got  to  the  appointed  part  of  Walnut 
Street  in  time,  had  I  found  at  the  door  the  companion  to 
go  there  with  me.  There  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  walk 
home  alone  or  sedately  at  my  Father's  side,  and  one's 
Father,  however  correct  he  might  be  under  other  circum- 
tances,  was  not  the  right  person  for  these  occasions.  On 
Sundays  I  could  not  conceal  from  myself  that  I  was 
socially  at  a  discount.  The  reflection  that  this  was  where 
I,  as  a  Catholic,  scored,  should  have  consoled  me,  for  if  the 
Episcopalian  was  performing  a  social  duty  when  he  went 
to  church,  I,  as  a  Catholic,  was  making  a  social  sacrifice, 
and  sacrifice  of  some  sort  is  of  the  essence  of  religion. 

Ill 

If  I  could  but  have  taken  the  trouble  to  be  interested, 
it  must  also  have  occurred  to  me  to  wonder  why  St.  Jos- 
eph's, where  I  went  so  often,  was  hidden  in  an  obscure 
alley.  In  Philadelphia,  the  town  of  straight  streets 
crossing  each  other  at  right  angles,  it  is  not  easy  for  a 
building  of  the  kind  to  keep  out  of  sight.  But  not  one  man 
in  a  hundred,  not  one  in  a  thousand,  who,  passing  along 
Third  Street,  looked  up  Willing's  Alley,  dreamt  for  a 
minute  that  somewhere  in  that  alley,  embedded  in  a  net- 


188  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

work  of  brokers'  and  railroad  offices,  carefully  concealing 
every  trace  of  itself,  was  a  church  with  a  large  congrega- 
tion. Most  churches  in  Philadelphia,  as  everywhere,  like 
to  display  themselves  prominently  with  an  elaborate 
fa9ade,  or  a  lofty  steeple,  or  a  green  enclosure,  or  a  grave- 
yard full  of  monuments.  St.  Peteri's,  close  by,  fills  a 
whole  block.  Christ  Church  stands  flush  with  the  pave- 
ment. The  simplest  Meeting-House,  by  the  beautiful 
trees  that  overshadow  it  or  the  high  walls  that  enclose  it 
or  the  bit  of  green  at  its  door,  will  not  let  the  passer-by 
forget  it.  But  St.  Joseph's,  evidently,  did  not  want  to  be 
seen,  did  not  want  to  be  remembered ;  evidently  hesitated  to 
show  that  its  doors  were  wide  and  hospitably  open  to  all 
the  world  in  the  beautiful  fashion  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
There  was  something  furtive  about  it,  an  air  of  mystery, 
it  was  almost  as  if  one  were  keeping  a  clandestine  appoint- 
ment with  religion  when  one  turned  from  the  street  into 
the  humble  alley,  and  from  the  alley  into  the  silence  of  the 
sanctuary. 

Perhaps  I  thought  less  about  this  mysterious  aloofness 
because,  once  in  the  church,  I  felt  so  much  at  home.  I  do 
not  mind  owning  now,  though  I  would  not  have  owned  it 
then  for  a  good  deal,  that  after  my  return  from  the  Con- 
vent, I  had  the  uncomfortable  feeling  of  being  a  stranger 
not  only  in  my  town,  but  in  my  family.  I  had  been  in  the 
Convent  eleven  years  and  until  this  day  when  I  look  back 
to  my  childhood,  it  is  the  Convent  I  remember  as  home. 
St.  Joseph's  seemed  a  part  of  the  Convent,  therefore  of 


\ 


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CHRIST  CHURCH,  FROM  SECOND  STREET 


A  QUESTION  OF  CREED  191 

home,  that  had  strayed  into  the  town  by  mistake.  In  some 
ways  it  was  not  hke  the  Convent,  greatly  to  my  discomfort. 
The  chapel  there  was  daintj^  in  detail,  exquisitely  kept, 
the  altars  fresh  with  flowers  from  the  Convent  garden,  and 
for  congregation  the  nuns  and  the  girls  modestly  and  de- 
murely veiled.  But  nothing  was  dainty  about  St.  Joseph's, 
— men  are  as  untidy  in  running  a  church  as  in  keeping  a 
house — it  was  not  well  kept,  the  flowers  were  artificial  and 
tawdry,  and  the  congregation  was  largely  made  up  of 
shabby  old  Irishwomen.  The  priests — Jesuits — were 
mostly  Italian,  with  those  unpleasant  habits  of  Italian 
priests  that  are  a  shock  to  the  convent-bred  American  when 
she  first  goes  to  Italy.  They  had,  however,  the  virtue  of 
old  friends,  their  faces  were  familiar,  I  had  known  them 
for  years  at  the  Convent  which  they  had  frequently  visited 
and  where,  by  special  grace,  they  had  refrained  from  some 
of  the  unpleasant  habits  that  offended  me  at  St.  Joseph's. 

There  was  Father  de  Maria,  tall,  thin,  with  a  wonder- 
ful shock  of  white  hair,  a  fine  ascetic  face  and  a  kindly 
smile,  not  adapted  to  shine  in  children's  society — too  much 
of  a  scholar  I  fancied  though  I  may  have  been  wrong — 
and  with  an  effect  of  severity  which  I  do  not  think  he 
meant,  but  which  had  kept  me  at  a  safe  distance  when  he 
came  to  see  us  at  Torresdale.  But  he  had  come,  I  could 
not  remember  the  time  when  I  had  not  known  him,  and 
that  was  in  his  favour. 

There  was  Father  Ardea,  a  small,  shrinking,  dark 
man,  from  whom  also  it  was  more  comfortable  to  keep  at  a 


192  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

safe  distance,  so  little  had  he  to  say  and  such  a  trick  of 
looking  at  you  with  an  "  Eh?  Eh?  "  of  expectation,  as  if 
he  relied  upon  you  to  supply  the  talk  he  had  not  at  his  own 
command.  But  I  could  have  forgiven  him  worse,  so 
pleasant  a  duty  did  he  make  of  confession.  His  penances 
were  light  and  his  only  comment  \i^as  "Eh?  Eh?  my 
child?  But  you  didn't  mean  it!  You  didn't  mean  it!" 
until  I  longed  to  accuse  myself  of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins 
with  the  L^npardonable  Sin  thrown  in,  just  to  see  if  he 
would  still  assure  me  that  I  didn't  mean  it. 

There  was  Father  Bobbelin — our  corruption  I  fancy  of 
Barbelin — -a  Frenchman,  short  and  fat,  sandy-haired,  with 
a  round  smiling  face:  the  most  welcome  of  all.  He  was 
always  very  snuffy,  and  always  ready  to  hand  round  his 
snufF-box  if  talk  languished  when  he  went  out  to  walk 
with  us,  which  I  liked  better  than  Father  Ardea's  em- 
barrassing "Eh?  Eh?"  It  was  to  Father  Bobbelin  an 
inexhaustible  joke,  and  the  only  other  I  knew  him  to 
venture  upon  resulted  in  so  unheard-of  a  breach  of  dis- 
cipline that  ever  after  we  saw  less  of  him  and  his  snufF- 
box.  He  was  walking  with  us  down  Mulberry  Avenue 
one  afternoon,  the  little  girls  clustered  about  him  as  they 
were  always  sure  to  be,  and  the  nun  in  charge  a  little 
behind  with  the  bigger,  more  sedate  girls.  When  we  got 
to  the  end  of  the  Avenue,  the  carriage  gate  leading  straight 
out  into  the  World  was  open  as  it  had  never  been  before, 
as  it  never  was  again.  Father  Bobbelin's  fat  shoulders 
shook  with  laughter.    He  opened  the  gate  wider.    "  Xow, 


i 


A  QUESTION  OF  CREED  193 

children,"  he  said,  "here's  your  chance.  Run  for  it!" 
And  we  did,  we  ran  as  if  for  our  lives,  though  no  children 
could  have  loved  their  school  better  or  wanted  less  to  get 
away  from  it.  One  or  two  ran  as  far  as  the  railroad,  the 
most  adventurous  crossed  it,  and  were  making  full  tilt 
for  the  river  before  all  were  caught  and  brought  back  and 
sent  to  bed  in  disgrace.  After  that  Father  Bobbelin 
visited  us  only  in  our  class-room. 

And  there  were  other  priests  whose  names  escape  me, 
but  not  their  home-like  faces.  Now  and  then  Jesuits  who 
gave  Missions  and  who  had  conducted  the  retreats  at  the 
Convent,  appeared  at  St.  Joseph's, — Father  Smarius,  the 
huge  Dutchman,  so  enormous  they  used  to  tell  us  at  the 
Convent  that  he  had  never  seen  his  feet  for  twenty  years, 
who  had  baptized  my  Father  and  his  family  in  the  Con- 
vent chapel;  and  Father  Boudreau,  the  silent,  shy  little 
Louisianian,  whom  I  remember  so  well  coming  with  Father 
Smarius  one  June  day  to  bless,  and  sprinkle  Holy  Water 
over  that  big  yellow  and  white  house  close  to  the  Convent 
which  my  Father  had  taken  for  the  summer;  and  Father 
Glackmeyer,  and  Father  Coghlan,  and  with  them  others 
whose  presence  helped  the  more  to  fill  St.  Joseph's  with  the 
intimate  convent  atmosphere. 

IV 

These  old  friends  and  old  associations  took  away  from 
the  uneasiness  it  might  otherwise  have  given  me  to  find  the 
church,  for  which  I  had  exchanged  the  Convent  chapel, 

13 


194  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

hidden  up  an  alley  as  if  its  existence  were  a  sin.  But  over- 
look it  as  I  might,  this  was  the  one  important  fact  about 
St.  Joseph's  which,  otherwise,  had  no  particular  interest. 
It  did  not  count  as  architecture,  it  boasted  of  no  beauty  of 
decoration :  an  inconspicuous,  commonplace  building  from 
every  point  of  view,  of  which  I  consequently  retain  but  the 
vaguest  memory.  As  I  write,  I  can  see,  as  if  it  were  be- 
fore me,  the  Convent  chapel,  its  every  nook  and  corner, 
almost  its  every  stone,  this  altar  here,  that  picture  there, 
the  confessional  in  the  screened-ofF  space  where  visitors  sat, 
the  dark  step  close  to  the  altar  railing  where  I  carried  my 
wrongs  and  my  sorrows.  But  try  as  I  may,  I  cannot  see 
St.  Joseph's  as  it  was,  cannot  see  any  detail,  nothing  save 
the  general  shabbiness  and  untidiness  that  shocked  my 
convent-bred  eyes.  Could  it  have  appealed  by  its  beauty, 
like  the  old  Cathedrals  of  Europe,  or,  for  that  matter,  like 
the  old  churches  of  Philadelphia,  no  doubt  I  should  be  able 
to  recall  it  as  vividly  as  the  Convent  chapel.  Because  I 
cannot,  because  it  impressed  me  so  superficially,  I  regret 
the  more  that  I  had  not  the  sense  to  appreciate  the  interest 
it  borrowed  from  the  romance  of  history  and  the  beauty 
of  suffering — the  history  of  the  Catholic  religion  in  Phila- 
delphia which  I  might  have  read  in  this  careful  hiding  of 
its  temple ;  the  suffering  of  the  scapegoat  among  churches, 
obliged  to  keep  out  of  sight,  atoning  for  their  intolerance 
in  a  desert  of  secrecy,  letting  no  man  know  where  its 
prayers  were  said  or  its  services  held.  Catholics  had  to 
practise  their  religion  like  criminals  skulking  from  the 


^^«?*w;^l^ 


FIRST  PRESBYTERIAN  CHURCH,  SEVENTH  STREET  AND  WASHINGTON  SQUARE 


A  QUESTION  OF  CREED  197 

law.  Members  of  a  Protestant  church  might  dispute 
among  themselves  to  the  point  of  blows,  but  they  never 
thought  of  interfering  with  the  members  of  any  other 
church,  except  the  Catholic,  against  which  they  could  all 
cheerfully  join.  There  were  times  when  the  Friends,  most 
tolerant  of  men,  were  influenced  by  this  general  hostility, 
and  I  rather  think  the  worst  moment  in  Penn's  life  was 
when  he  was  forced  to  protest  against  the  scandal  of  the 
Mass  in  his  town  of  Brotherly  Love. 

The  marvel  is  that  Catholics  ventured  out  of  their 
hiding-places  as  soon  as  they  did.  They  had  emerged  so 
successfully  by  Revolutionary  times  that  the  stranger  in 
Philadelphia  could  find  his  way  to  "  the  Romish  chapel " 
and  enjoy  the  luxury  of  knowing  that  he  was  not  as  these 
poor  wretches  who  fingered  their  beads  and  chanted  Latin 
not  a  word  of  which  they  understood.  The  Jesuits  have 
the  wisdom  of  their  reputation.  When  they  built  their 
church  the  Colonies  had  for  some  years  been  the  United 
States,  and  hatred  was  less  outspoken,  and  persecution 
was  more  intermittent,  but  they  believed  discretion  to  be 
the  better  part  of  valour  and  the  truest  security  in  not 
challenging  attack.  That  is  why  they  built  St.  Joseph's 
in  Willing's  Alley  where  the  visitor  with  a  dramatic  sense 
must  be  as  thrilled  by  it  as  by  the  secret  chapels  and  under- 
ground passages  in  old  Elizabethan  mansions  and  Scott's 
novels.  Philadelphia  gave  the  Jesuits  a  proof  of  their 
wisdom   when,   within   a  quarter   of   a   centuiy,   Young 


198  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

America,  in  a  playful  moment,  burnt  down  as  much  as  it 
could  of  St.  Michael's  and  St.  Augustine's ;  churches  which 
had  been  built  bravely  and  hopefully  in  open  places. 
Young  America  believed  in  a  healthy  reminder  to  Catho- 
lics, that,  if  they  had  not  been  disturbed  for  some  time,  it 
was  not  because  they  did  not  deserve  to  be. 

Philadelphia  had  got  beyond  the'  exciting  stage  of  in- 
tolerance before  I  was  born.  There  were  no  delicious 
tremors  to  be  had  when  I  heard  Mass  at  St.  Joseph's  or 
went  to  Vespers  at  St.  Mary's.  There  was  no  ear  alert 
for  a  warning  of  the  approach  of  the  enemy,  no  eye 
strained  for  the  first  wisp  of  smoke  or  burst  of  flame.  With 
churches  and  convents  everywhere — convents  intruding 
even  upon  Walnut  Street  and  Rittenhouse  Square — ^with  a 
big  Cathedral  in  town  and  a  big  Seminary  at  Villanova, 
Catholics  were  in  a  fair  way  to  forget  it  had  ever  been  as 
dangerous  for  them  as  for  the  early  Christians  to  venture 
from  their  catacombs.  Their  religion  had  become  a  tame 
aflfair,  holding  out  no  prospect  of  the  martyr's  crown.  Only 
the  social  prejudice  survived,  but  it  was  the  more  bitter  to 
fight  because,  whether  the  end  was  victory  or  defeat,  it 
appeared  so  inglorious  a  struggle  to  be  engaged  in. 

One  good  result  there  was  of  this  social  ostracism.  I 
leave  myself  out  of  the  argument.  Religion,  I  have  often 
heard  it  said,  is  a  matter  of  temperament.  As  this  story 
of  my  relations  to  Philadelphia  seems  to  be  resolving  itself 
into  a  general  confession,  I  must  at  least  confess  my  cer- 


LOGAN  SQUARE  AND  THE  CATHEDRAL 


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A  QUESTION  OF  CREED  199 

tainty  that  I  have  not  and  never  had  the  necessary  tempera- 
ment, that,  moreover,  the  necessary  temperament  is  not  to 
be  had  by  any  effort  of  will  power,  depending  rather  upon 
"the  influence  of  the  unknown  powers."  But  I  am  not 
totally  blind,  nor  was  I  in  the  old  days  when,  many  as  were 
the  things  I  did  not  see,  my  eyes  were  still  open  to  the 
effect  of  social  opposition  on  Catholics  with  the  tempera- 
ment. It  made  them  more  devout,  at  times  more  defiant. 
I  know  churches  that  are  in  themselves  alone  a  reward  for 
faith  and  fidelity — who  would  not  be  a  Catholic  in  the  dim 
religious  light  of  Chartres  Cathedral,  or  in  the  sombre 
splendours  of  Seville  and  Barcelona?  But  St.  Joseph's 
and  St.  Mary's,  St.  Patrick's  and  St.  John's  gave  no  such 
reward,  nor  did  the  Cathedral  in  its  far-away  imitation  of 
the  Jesuit  churches  of  Italy  and  France.  In  these  arid, 
unemotional  interiors,  emotion  could  not  kindle  piety 
which,  if  not  fed  by  more  spiritual  stuff,  was  bound  to 
flicker  and  go  out.  This  is  why  the  Philadelphian  who, 
in  those  unattractive  churches  and  in  spite  of  the  social 
price  paid,  remained  faithful,  was  the  most  devout  Catho- 
lic I  have  ever  met  at  home  or  in  my  wanderings. 

V 

For  his  spiritual  welfare,  it  might  have  been  better  had 
the  conditions  remained  as  I  knew  them.  But  even  at 
that  period,  the  signs  of  weakening  in  the  social  barrier 
must  have  jumped  to  my  eyes  had  I  had  eyes  for  the  fine 


200 


OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


shades.  Catholics  among  themselves  had  begim  to  put  up 
social  barriers,  so  much  further  had  Philadelphia  travelled 
on  the  road  to  liberty. 

Religiously,  one  of  their  churches  was  as  good  as  an- 
other, but  not  socially.  St.  Mark's,  from  its  superior 
Episcopal  heights,  might  look  down  equally  upon  St. 
Patrick's  and  St.  John's,  but  the  Catholic  with  a  pew  at 
St.  John's  did  not  at  all  look  upon  the  Catholic  with  a  seat 
at  St.  Patrick's  as  on  the  same  social  level  as  himself.  St. 
Patrick's  name  alone  was  sufficient  to  attract  an  Irish 
congregation,  and  the  Irish  who  then  flocked  to  Philadel- 
phia were  not  the  flower  of  Ireland's  aristocrac5^  St. 
John's,  by  some  unnamed  right,  claimed  the  Catholics  of 
social  pretensions — the  excellence  of  its  music  may  have 
strengthened  its  claim.  I  know  that  my  Father,  who  was  a 
religious  man,  did  not  object  to  having  the  comfort  of 
religion  strengthened  by  the  charms  of  Gounod's  Mass 
well  sung,  and,  at  the  last,  he  drifted  from  the  Cathedral 
to  St,  John's. 

The  Cathedral  necessarily  was  above  such  distinctions, 
as  a  Cathedral  should  be,  and  it  harboured  an  overflow 
from  St.  Patrick's  and  St.  John's  both.  But  it  was  the 
Cathedral,  rather  than  St.  John's,  that  did  most  to  weaken 
the  foundations  of  the  social  prejudice  against  the  Catholic. 
The  Bishop  there  was  Bishop  Wood,  and  Bishop  Wood, 
like  my  Father  a  convert,  was  no  Irish  emigrant,  no  Italian 
missionary,  but  came  from  the  same  old  family  of  Phila- 


OLD  SWEDES'  CHURCH 


A  QUESTION  OF  CREED  203 

delphia  Friends  as  J.  Some  people  think  that 
Quakerism  and  Catholicism  are  more  in  sympathy  with 
each  other  than  with  other  creeds  because  neither  recog- 
nizes any  half  way,  each  going  to  a  logical  extreme. 
Whether  Bishop  Wood  thought  so,  I  am  far  from  sure, 
but  he  had  himself  gone  from  one  extreme  to  the  other 
when  he  became  a  Catholic,  and  the  religious  step  had  its 
social  bearing.  With  his  splendid  presence  and  splendid 
voice,  he  must  have  added  dignity  to  every  service  at  the 
Cathedra],  but  he  did  more  than  that:  in  Philadelphia  eyes 
he  gave  it  the  sanction  of  Philadelphia  respectability.  The 
Catholic  was  no  longer  quite  without  Philadelphia's  social 
pale. 

I  had  no  opportunity,  because  of  my  long  absence,  to 
watch  the  gradual  breakdown,  but  I  saw  that  the  barrier 
had  fallen  when  I  got  back  to  Philadelphia.  Never  again 
will  Philadelphia  children  think  they  are  doing  an  odd 
thing  when  they  go  to  Mass,  never  again  need  the  Phila- 
delphia girl  fresh  from  the  Convent  fancy  herself  alone 
in  the  yawning  gulf  of  evil  that  opens  at  the  Convent  gate. 
I  should  not  be  surprised  if  an  eligible  man  from  the  Danc- 
ing Class  or  Assembly  list  can  to-day  be  picked  up  at  the 
door  of  more  than  one  Catholic  church  for  the  Sunday 
Walk  on  Walnut  Street.  St.  John's  has  risen,  new  and 
resplendent,  if  ugly,  from  its  ashes;  St.  Patrick's  has 
blossomed  forth  from  its  architectural  insignificance  into 
an  imposing  Romanesque  structure.     The  Cathedral  has 


204  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

been  new  swept  and  garnished — not  so  large  perhaps  as  I 
once  saw  it,  for  I  have  been  to  St.  Paul's  and  St.  Peter's 
and  many  a  Jesuit  church  in  the  meanwhile,  but  more 
ornate,  with  altars  and  decorations  that  I  knew  not,  and 
with  Mr.  Henry  Thouron's  design  on  one  wall  as  a  promise 
of  further  beauty  to  come.  The  diiFerence  confronted  me 
at  every  step — and  saddened  me,  thougti  I  could  not  deny 
that  it  meant  improvement.  But  the  change,  as  change, 
displeased  me  in  a  Philadelphia  that  ceases  to  be  my  Phila- 
delphia when  it  ceases  to  preserve  its  old  standards  and 
prejudices  as  jealously  as  its  old  monuments.  For  the 
sake  of  the  character  I  loved,  I  could  wish  Philadelphia 
as  far  as  ever  from  hope  of  salvation  by  anj-ihing  save  its 
own  invincible  ignorance. 


CHAPTER  IX:  THE  FIRST  AWAKENING 


I  HAD  been  out,  I  do  not  remember  how  long,  but 
long  enough  to  confirm  my  belief  in  the  Philadel- 
phia way  of  doing  things  as  the  only  way,  when  I 
found  that  Philadelphia  was  involved  in  an  enterprise 
for  which  its  history  might  give  the  reason  but  could 
furnish  no  precedent.  To  Philadelphians  who  were  older 
than  I,  or  who  had  been  in  Philadelphia  while  I  was  get- 
ting through  the  business  of  education  at  the  Convent,  the 
Centennial  Exposition  probably  did  not  come  as  so  great 
a  surprise.  Having  since  had  experience  of  how  these 
matters  are  ordered,  I  can  understand  that  there  must  have 
been  some  years  of  leading  up  to  it.  But  I  seem  to  have 
heard  of  it  first  within  no  time  of  its  opening,  and  just  as 
I  had  got  used  to  the  idea  that  Philadelphia  must  go  on 
for  ever  doing  things  as  it  always  had  done  them,  because 
to  do  them  otherwise  would  not  be  right  or  proper. 

The  result  was  that,  at  the  moment,  I  saw  in  the  Cen- 
tennial chiefly  a  violent  upheaval  shaking  the  universe  to 
the  foundations,  with  Philadelphia  emerging,  changed, 
transformed,  unrecognizable,  plunging  head-foremost  into 
new-fangled  amusements,  adding  new  duties  to  the  Phila- 
delphian's  once  all-sufficing  duty  of  being  a  Philadelphian, 
inventing  new  attractions  to  draw  to  its  drowsy  streets 

205 


206  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

people  from  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe,  and,  more 
astounding,  giving  itself  up  to  these  innovations  with  zest. 
I  looked  on  at  the  preparations, — as  at  most  things,  to 
my  infinite  boredom, — from  outside:  a  perspective  from 
which  they  appeared  to  me  little  more  than  a  new  form  of 
social  diversion.     For  they  kept  my  gayer  friends,  who 
were  well  on  the  inside,  busy  going  to  Centennial  balls  at 
the  Academy  of  Music  in  the  Colonial  dress  which  was  as 
essential  for  admission  as  a  Colonial  name  or  a  Colonial 
family  tree,  while  I  stayed  at  home  and,  seeing  what  lovely 
creatures  powder  and  patches  and  paniers  made  of  Phila- 
delphia girls  with  no  more  pretence  to  good  looks  than  I, 
felt  a  little  as  I  did  when  the  coloured  dignitary  rang  at 
our  front  door  with  the  Assembly  card  that  was  not  for 
me.     And  between  the  balls,  the  same  friends  were  im- 
mersed in  Centennial  Societies  and  Centennial  Committees 
and  Centennial  Meetings  and  Centennial   Subscriptions 
and  Centennial  Petitions,  Philadelphia  women  for  the  first 
time   admitted,    and   pining   for   admission,    into   public 
affairs;  while  I  was  so  far  apart  from  it  all  that  I  re- 
member but  one  incident  in  connection  with  the  Centennial 
orgy  of  work,  and  this  as  trivial  as  could  be.    When  we 
moved  into  the  Third  Street  house  we  had  found  in  posses- 
sion a  cat  who  left  us  in  no  doubt  of  her  disapproval  of  our 
intrusion,  but  who  tolerated  us  because  of  the  convenience 
of  the  ground  floor  windows  from  which  to  watch  for  her 
enemies  among  the  dogs  of  the  neighbourhood,  and  for  the 
comfort  of  certain  cupboards  upstairs  during  the  infancy 


INDEPENDENCE  HALL:  THE  ORIGINAL  DESK  ON  WHICH  THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE  WAS  SIGNED 
AND  THE  CHAIR  USED  BY  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  CONGRESS,  JOHN  HANCOCK,  IN  1776 

(both  on  platform) 


THE  FIRST  AWAKENING  209 

of  her  kittens.  She  kept  us  at  a  respectful  distance  and 
we  never  ventured  upon  any  liberties  with  her.  Those  of 
our  friends  who  did,  heedless  of  her  growls,  were  sure  to 
regret  it.  Our  family  doctor  carried  the  marks  of  her 
teeth  on  his  hand  for  many  a  day.  It  happened  that  once, 
when  two  Centennial  canvassers  called,  she  was  the  first 
to  greet  them  and  was  unfavourably  impressed  by  the 
voluminous  furs  in  which  they  were  wrapped.  When  I 
came  downstairs  she  was  holding  the  hall,  her  eyes  flam- 
ing, her  tail  five  times  its  natural  size,  and  I  understood 
the  prudence  of  non-interference.  The  canvassers  had  re- 
treated to  the  vestibule  between  the  two  front  doors  and, 
as  I  opened  the  inner  door,  another  glance  at  the  flaming 
eyes  and  indignant  tail  completed  their  defeat  and  they 
fled  without  explaining  the  object  of  their  visit.  I  must 
indeed  have  been  removed  from  the  Centennial  delirium 
and  turmoil  to  have  retained  this  absurd  encounter  as  one 
of  my  most  vivid  memories. 

II 

Upon  the  Centennial  itself  I  looked  at  closer  quarters. 
I  was  as  removed  from  it  oflficially,  but  not  quite  so  penni- 
less and  friendless  as  never  to  have  the  chance  to  visit  it. 
Inexperienced  and  untravelled  as  I  was,  it  opened  for  me 
vistas  hitherto  undreamed  of  and  stirred  my  interest  as 
nothing  in  Philadelphia  had  until  then.  As  I  recall  it, 
that  long  summer  is,  as  it  was  at  the  time,  a  bewildering 
jumble  of  first  impressions  and  revelations — Philadelphia 

14 


210  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

all  chaos  and  confusion,  functions  and  formalities,  spec- 
tacles and  sensations — buildings  Philadelphia  could  not 
have  conceived  of  in  its  sanity  covering  acres  of  its  beauti- 
ful Park,  a  whole  shanty  town  of  huge  hotels  and  cheap 
restaurants  and  side-shows  sprung  up  on  its  outskirts — 
marvels  in  the  buildings,  amazing,  foreign,  unbelievable 
marvels,  the  Arabian  Xights  rolled  into  one— interminable 
drives  in  horribly  crowded  street-cars  to  reach  them — 
lunches  of  Vienna  rolls  and  Vienna  coffee  in  Vienna  cafes, 
as  unlike  Jones's  on  Eleventh  Street  or  Burns's  on  Fif- 
teenth as  I  could  imagine — dinners  in  French  restaurants 
that,  after  Belmont  and  Strawberry  Mansion,  struck  me 
as  typically  Parisian  though  I  do  not  suppose  they  were 
Parisian  in  the  least — the  flaring  and  glaring  of  millions 
of  gas  lamps  under  Philadelphia's  tranquil  skies — a  de- 
lightful feeling  of  triimiph  that  Philadelphia  Avas  the  first 
American  town  to  do  what  London  had  done,  what  Paris 
had  done,  and  to  do  it  so  splendidly — ^burning  heat,  Phila- 
delphia apparently  bent  on  proving  to  the  unhappy  visitor 
what  the  native  knew  too  well,  that,  when  it  has  a  mind  to, 
it  can  be  the  most  intolerably  hot  place  in  the  world — 
sweltering,  demoralized  crowds — unexpected  descents 
upon  a  household  as  quiet  as  ours  of  friends  not  seen  for 
years  and  relations  never  heard  of — brilliant  autumn  days 
— an  atmosphere  of  activity,  excitement  and  exultation 
that  made  it  good  to  be  alive  and  in  the  midst  of  Centennial 
celebrations  without  bothering  to  seek  in  them  a  more 
serious  end  than  a  season's  amusement. 


PHILADELPHIA  FROM  BELMONT 


THE  FIRST  AWAKENING  213 

III 

But,  without  bothering,  I  could  not  escape  a  dim  per- 
ception that  Philadelphia  had  not  tui-ned  itself  topsy-turvy 
to  amuse  me  and  the  world.  Things  were  in  the  air  I 
could  not  get  away  from.  The  very  words  Centennial  and 
Colonial  were  too  new  in  my  vocabulary  not  to  start  me 
thinking,  httle  given  as  I  was  to  thinking  when  I  could 
save  myself  the  trouble.  And  however  lightly  I  might  be 
inclined  to  take  the  whole  affair,  the  rest  of  Philadelphia 
was  so  far  from  underestimating  it  that  probably  the 
younger  generation,  used  to  big  International  Expositions 
and  having  seen  the  wonders  of  the  Centennial  eclipsed  in 
Paris  and  Chicago  and  St.  Louis  and  its  pleasures  rivalled 
in  an  ordinary  summer  playground  like  Coney  Island  or 
Willow  Grove,  must  wonder  at  the  innocence  of  Phila- 
delphia in  making  such  a  fuss  over  such  an  everyday 
affair.  But  in  the  Eighteen- Seventies  the  big  Interna- 
tional Exposition  was  not  an  everyday  affair.  Europe 
had  held  only  one  or  two,  America  had  held  none,  Phila- 
delphia had  to  find  out  the  way  for  itself,  with  the  whole 
country  watching,  ready  to  jeer  at  the  sleepy  old  town 
if  it  went  wrong.  As  I  look  back,  though  I  realize  that 
the  Centennial  buildings  were  not  architectural  master- 
pieces— how  could  I  help  realising  it  with  Memorial  Hall 
still  out  there  in  the  Park  as  reminder? — though  I  realise 
that  Philadelphia  prosperity  did  not  date  from  the  Cen- 
tennial, that  Philadelphians  had  not  lived  in  a  slough  of 


214  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

inertia  and  ignorance  until  the  Centennial  pulled  them 
out  of  it:  all  the  same,  I  can  see  how  fine  an  achievement 
it  was,  and  how  successful  in  jerking  Philadelphians  from 
their  comfortable  rut  of  indifference  to  everything  going 
on  outside  of  Philadelphia,  or  to  whether  there  was  an  out- 
side for  things  to  go  on  in. 

I  know  that  I  was  conscious  of  the  jerk  in  my  little 
corner  of  the  rut.  The  Centennial,  for  one  thing,  gave  me 
my  first  object  lesson  in  patriotism.  There  was  no  special 
training  for  the  patriot  when  I  was  young — no  school 
drilling,  with  flags,  to  national  music.  An  American  was 
an  American,  not  a  Russian  Jew,  a  Slovak,  or  a  Pole,  and 
patriotism  was  supposed  to  follow  as  a  matter  of  course. 
It  did,  but  I  fancy  with  many,  as  with  me,  after  a  passive, 
unintelligent  sort  of  fashion.  I  knew  about  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  but  had  anybody  asked  for  my 
opinion  of  it,  I  doubtless  should  have  dismissed  it  as  a  dull 
page  in  a  dull  history  book,  a  difficult  passage  to  get  by 
heart.  But  I  could  not  go  on  thinking  of  it  in  that  way 
when  so  remote  an  occasion  as  its  hundredth  birthday  was 
sending  Philadelphia  off  its  head  in  this  mad  carnival 
of  excitement.  In  little,  as  in  big,  matters  I  was  con- 
stantly brought  up  against  the  fact  that  things  did  not 
exist  simply  because  they  were,  but  because  something 
had  been.  An  old  time-worn  story  that  amused  the  Phila- 
delphian  in  its  day  is  of  the  American  from  another  town, 
who,  after  listening  to  much  Philadelphia  talk,  interrupted 
to  ask:  "  But  what  is  a  Biddle?"    I  am  afraid  I  should 


THE  FIRST  AWAKENING  215 

have  been  puzzled  to  answer.  For  a  Biddle  was  a  Biddle, 
just  as  Spruce  Street  was  Spruce  Street,  just  as  Phila- 
delphia was  Philadelphia.  That  had  been  enough  in  all 
conscience  for  the  Philadelphian,  but  the  Centennial  would 
not  let  it  be  enough  for  me  anj^  longer. 

My  first  hint  that  Philadelphia  and  Spruce  Street  and 
a  Biddle  needed  a  past  to  justify  the  esteem  in  which  we 
held  them,  came  from  the  spectacle  of  Mrs.  Gillespie 
towering  supreme  above  Philadelphians  with  far  more 
familiar  names  than  hers  at  every  Centennial  ball  and  in 
every  Centennial  Society,  the  central  figure  in  the  Cen- 
tennial preparations  and  in  the  Centennial  itself.  I  did 
not  know  her  personally,  but  that  made  no  diiference. 
There  was  no  blotting  out  her  powerful  presence,  she 
pervaded  the  Centennial  atmosphere.  She  remains  in  the 
foreground  of  my  Centennial  memories,  a  tall,  gaunt 
woman,  not  especially  gi-acious,  apparently  without  a 
doubt  of  her  right  to  her  conspicuous  position,  ready  to 
resent  the  eiFrontery  of  the  sceptic  who  challenged  it  had 
there  been  a  sceptic  so  daring,  anything  but  popular,  and 
yet  her  rule  accepted  unquestioningly  for  no  better  reason 
than  because  she  was  the  descendant  of  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin, and  I  could  not  help  knowing  that  she  was  his  de- 
scendant, for  nobody  could  mention  her  without  dragging 
in  his  name.  It  revolutionized  my  ideas  of  school  and 
school  books,  no  less  than  of  Philadelphia.  I  had  learned 
the  story  of  Benjamin  Franklin  and  the  kite,  just  as  I  had 
learned  the  story  of  George  Washington  and  the  cherry 


216  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

tree,  and  of  General  Marion  and  the  sweet  potatoes,  and 
other  anecdotes  of  heroes  invented  to  torment  the  young. 
And  now  here  was  Franklin  turning  out  to  be  not  merely 
the  hero  of  an  anecdote  that  bored  every  right-minded 
school-girl  to  death,  but  a  person  of  such  consequence 
that  his  descendant  in  the  third  or  fourth  generation  had 
the  right  to  lord  it  over  Philadelphia.  There  was  no 
getting  away  from  that  any  more  than  there  was  from 
INIrs.  Gillespie  herself  and,  incidentally,  it  suggested  a 
new  reason  for  Biddies  and  Cadwalladers  and  Whartons 
and  Morrises  and  Norrises  and  Logans  and  Philadelphia 
families  with  their  names  on  the  Assembly  list.  That  they 
were  the  resplendent  creatures  Philadelphia  thought  them 
was  not  so  elementary  a  fact  as  the  shining  of  the  sun  in 
the  heavens;  they  owed  it  to  their  ancestors  just  as  Mrs. 
Gillespie  owed  her  splendour  to  Franklin ;  and  an  ancestor 
immediately  became  the  first  necessity  in  Philadelphia. 

The  man  who  is  preoccupied  with  his  ancestors  has  a 
terrible  faculty  of  becoming  a  snob,  and  Philadelphians  for 
a  while  concerned  themselves  with  little  else.  They  de- 
voted every  hour  of  leisure  to  the  study  of  genealogy,  they 
besieged  the  Historical  Society  in  search  of  inconsiderate 
ancestors  who  had  neglected  to  make  conspicuous  figures 
of  themselves  and  so  had  to  be  hunted  up,  they  left  no 
stone  unturned  to  prove  their  Colonial  descent.  It  must 
have  been  this  period  that  my  Brother,  Grant  Robins,  irri- 
tated with  our  forefathers  for  their  mistake  in  settling  in 
Virginia  half  a  century  before  there  was  a  Philadelphia 


THE  DINING  ROOM   STENTON 


I 


THE  FIRST  AWAKENING  219 

to  settle  ill  and  then  making  a  half-way  halt  in  JNIaryland, 
hurried  down  to  the  Eastern  Shore  to  get  together  what 
material  he  could  to  keep  us  in  countenance  in  the  town 
of  my  Grandfather's  adoption.  It  was  soothing  to  find 
more  than  one  Robins  among  the  earliest  settlers  of  Vir- 
ginia and  mixed  up  with  Virginia  affairs  at  an  agreeably 
early  date.  But  what  wouldn't  I  have  given  to  see  our 
name  in  a  little  square  on  one  of  the  early  maps  of  the 
City  of  Philadelphia  as  I  have  since  seen  J.'s?  And  the 
interest  in  ancestors  spread,  and  no  Englishman  could  ever 
have  been  so  eager  to  prove  that  he  came  over  with  the 
Conqueror  as  every  American  was  to  show  that  he  dated 
back  to  William  Penn,  or  the  first  Virginia  Company,  or 
the  Dutch,  or  the  Mayflower ;  no  Order  of  Merit  or  Legion 
of  Honour  could  have  conferred  more  glory  on  an  Ameri- 
can than  a  Colonial  Governor  in  the  family;  no  aristocracy 
was  more  exclusive  than  the  American  founded  on  the  new 
societies  of  Colonial  Dames  and  Sons  and  Daughters  of 
Pennsylvania  and  of  every  other  State. 

It  was  preposterous,  I  grant,  in  a  country  whose  first 
article  of  faith  is  that  all  men  are  born  equal,  but  Ameri- 
cans could  have  stood  a  more  severe  attack  of  snobbish- 
ness in  those  days,  the  prevailing  attitude  of  Americans  at 
home  being  not  much  less  irreverent  than  that  of  the  Inno- 
cents Abroad.  In  Philadelphia  it  was  not  so  much  irrev- 
erence as  indifference.  The  habit  of  Philadelphians  to 
depreciate  their  town  and  themselves,  inordinate  as, 
actually,  was  their  pride  in  both,  had  not  been  thrown  off. 


220  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Why  they  ever  got  into  the  habit  remains  to  me  and  to 
every  Philadelphian  a  problem.  Some  think  it  was  be- 
cause the  rest  of  the  country  depreciated  them;  some 
attribute  it  to  Quaker  influence,  though  how  and  why 
they  cannot  say;  and  some  see  in  it  the  result  of  the  Phila- 
delphia exclusiveness  that  reduces  the^social  life  of  Phila- 
delphia to  one  small  group  in  one  small  section  of  the 
town  so  that  it  is  as  small  as  village  life,  and  has  the  village 
love  of  scandal,  the  village  preoccupation  with  petty 
gossip,  the  little  things  at  the  front  door  blotting  out  the 
big  things  beyond.  A  more  plausible  reason  is  that  Phila- 
delphians  were  so  innately  sure  of  themselves — so  sure  that 
Philadelphia  was  the  town  and  Philadelphians  the  aristoc- 
racy of  the  world — that  they  could  afford  to  be  indifferent. 
But  whatever  the  cause,  this  indifference,  this  deprecia- 
tion, was  worse  than  a  blunder,  it  was  a  loss  in  a  town  with 
a  past  so  well  worth  looking  into  and  being  proud  of  and 
taking  care  of. 

A  few  Philadelphians  had  interested  themselves  in 
their  past,  otherwise  the  Historical  Society  would  not  have 
existed,  but  they  were  distressingly  few.  I  can  honestly 
say  that  up  to  the  time  of  the  Centennial  it  had  never 
entered  into  my  mind  that  the  past  in  Philadelphia  had  a 
value  for  every  Philadelphian  and  that  it  was  every  Phila- 
delphian's  duty  to  help  preserve  any  record  that  might 
survive  of  it — that  the  State  House,  the  old  churches,  the 
old  streets  where  I  took  my  daily  walks  were  a  possession 
Philadelphia  should  do  its  best  not  to  part  with — and  I 


THE  FIRST  AWAKENING  221 

was  such  a  mere  re-echo  of  Philadelphia  ideas  and  prej- 
udices that  I  know  most  Philadelphians  were  as  ignorant 
and  as  heedless.  But  almost  the  first  effort  of  the  new 
Dames  and  Sons  and  Daughters  was  to  protect  the  old 
architecture,  the  outward  sign  and  symbol  of  age  and  the 
aristocracy  of  age,  and  they  made  so  much  noise  in  doing 
so  that  even  I  heard  it,  even  I  became  conscious  of  a  re- 
search as  keen  for  a  past,  or  a  genealogy  in  the  familiar 
streets  and  the  familiar  buildings  as  in  the  archives  of  His- 
torical Societies. 

If  the  Centennial  had  done  no  more  for  Philadelphia 
than  to  put  Philadelphians  to  this  work,  it  would  have 
done  enough.  But  it  did  do  more.  The  pride  of  family, 
dismissed  by  many  as  pure  snobbishness,  awoke  the  sort 
of  patriotism  that  Philadelphia,  with  all  America,  was 
most  in  need  of  if  the  real  American  was  not  to  be  swept 
away  before  the  hordes  of  aliens  beginning  then  to  invade 
his  country.  In  my  opinion,  the  Colonial  Dames,  for  all 
their  follies,  are  doing  far  more  to  keep  up  the  right 
American  spirit  than  the  flaunting  of  the  stars  and  stripes 
in  the  alien's  face  and  the  lavishing  upon  him  of  the 
Government's  paternal  attention.  The  question  is  how 
long  they  can  avoid  the  pitfall  of  exaggeration. 

IV 

If  there  was  one  thing  in  those  days  I  knew  less  of  than 
the  past  in  Philadelphia,  it  was  the  present  outside  of  it. 
Of  my  own  country  my  knowledge  was  limited  to  an 


222  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

occasional  trip  to  New  York,  an  occasional  visit  to  Rich- 
mond and  Annapolis,  an  occasional  summer  month  in 
Cape  May  and  Atlantic  City.  Travelling  is  not  for  the 
poor.  Rich  Philadelphians  travelled  more,  but  from  no 
keen  desire  to  see  their  native  land.  The  end  of  the 
journey  was  usually  a  social  function  in  Washington  or 
Baltimore,  in  New  York  or  Boston,  upon  which  their 
presence  conferred  distinction,  though  they  would  rather 
have  dispensed  with  it  than  let  it  interfere  with  the  always 
more  important  social  functions  at  home.  Or  else  the  heat 
of  summer  drove  them  to  those  seashore  and  mountain 
resorts  where  they  could  count  upon  being  with  other 
Philadelphians,  and  the  winter  cold  sent  them  in  Lent 
to  Florida,  when  it  began  to  be  possible  to  carry  all  Phila- 
delphia there  with  them. 

My  knowledge  of  the  rest  of  the  world  was  more 
limited.  I  had  been  in  France,  but  when  I  was  such  a 
child  that  I  remembered  little  of  it  except  the  nuns  in  the 
Convent  at  Paris  where  I  went  to  school,  and  the  Garden 
of  the  Tuileries  I  looked  across  to  from  the  Hotel  Meurice. 
Nor  had  going  abroad  as  yet  been  made  a  habit  in  Phila- 
delphia. There  was  nothing  against  the  Philadelphian 
going  who  chose  to  and  who  had  the  money.  It  defied  no 
social  law.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  to  his  social  credit, 
though  not  indispensable  as  the  Grand  Tour  was  to  the 
Englishman  in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  I  remember 
when  my  Grandfather  followed  the  correct  tourist  route 
through  England,  France,  and  Switzerland,  his  children 


DOWN  THE  AISLE  AT  CHRIST  CHURCH 


THE  FIRST  AWAKENING  225 

considered  it  an  event  of  sufficient  importance  to  be  com- 
memorated by  printing,  for  family  circulation,  an  elabor- 
ately got  up  volume  of  the  eminently  commonplace  letters 
he  had  written  home — a  tribute,  it  is  due  to  him  to  add, 
that  met  with  his  great  astonishment  and  complete  dis- 
approval. I  can  recall  my  admiration  for  those  of  my 
friends  who  made  the  journey  and  my  regret  that  I  had 
made  it  when  I  was  too  young  to  get  any  glory  out  of  it ; 
also,  my  delight  in  the  trumpery  little  alabaster  figures 
from  Naples  and  carved  wood  from  Geneva  and  filigree 
jewellery  from  the  Rue  de  Rivoli  they  brought  me  back 
from  their  journey:  the  wholesale  distribution  of  presents 
on  his  return  being  the  heavy  tax  the  traveller  abroad  paid 
for  the  distinction  of  having  crossed  the  Atlantic — a  tax, 
I  believe,  that  has  sensibly  been  done  away  with  since  the 
Philadelphian's  discovery  of  the  German  Bath,  the  Lon- 
don season,  and  the  economy  of  Europe  as  reasons  for 
going  abroad  every  summer. 

I  was  scarcely  more  familiar  with  the  foreigner  than 
with  his  country.  Philadelphia  had  Irish  in  plenty,  as 
many  Germans  as  beer  saloons,  or  so  I  gathered  from  the 
names  over  the  saloon  doors,  and  enough  Italians  to  sell 
it  fruit  and  black  its  boots  at  street  corners.  But  other- 
wise, beyond  a  rare  Chinaman  with  a  pigtail  and  a  rarer 
Englishman  on  tour,  the  foreigner  was  seldom  seen  in 
Philadelphia  streets  or  in  Philadelphia  parlours.  In  early 
days  Philadelphia  had  been  the  first  place  the  distinguished 
foreigner  in  the  country  made  for.     It  was  the  most  im- 

15 


226  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

portant  town  and,  for  a  time,  the  capital.  But  after  Wash- 
ington claimed  the  diplomat  and  New  York  strode  ahead 
in  commerce  and  size  and  shipping,  Philadelphia  was  too 
near  each  for  the  traveller  to  stop  on  his  way  between 
them,  unless  he  was  an  actor,  a  lectiu'er,  or  somebody  who 
could  make  money  out  of  Philadelphi^a. 

I  feel  sorry  for  the  sophisticated  young  Philadelphian 
of  to-day  who  cannot  know  the  emotion  that  was  mine  when, 
of  a  sudden,  the  Centennial  dumped  down  "  abroad  "  right 
into  Philadelphia,  and  the  foreigner  was  rampant.  The 
modern  youth  saunters  into  a  World's  Fair  as  casually 
as  into  a  JVIarket  Street  or  Sixth  Avenue  Department 
Store,  but  never  had  the  monotony  of  my  life  been 
broken  by  an  experience  so  extraordinary  as  when  the 
easy-going  street-car  carried  me  out  of  my  world  of  red 
brick  into  the  heart  of  England,  and  France,  and  Ger- 
jnanj^  and  Italy,  and  Spain,  and  China,  and  Japan,  where 
I  rubbed  elbows  with  yellow  Orientals  in  brilliant  silks, 
and  with  soldiers  in  amazing  uniforms — I  who  had  seen 
our  sober  United  States  soldiers  only  on  parade — and  with 
people  who,  if  they  wore  ordinary  clothes,  spoke  all  the 
languages  under  the  sun.  It  was  extraordinary  even  to 
meet  so  many  Americans  who  were  not  Philadelphians, 
all  talking  American  with  to  me  a  foreign  accent,  extra- 
ordinary to  see  such  familiar  things  as  china,  glass,  silks, 
stuffs,  furniture,  carpets,  transformed  into  the  unfamiliar, 
unlike  anything  I  had  ever  seen  in  Chestnut  Street  win- 


THE  FIRST  AWAKENING  227 

dows  or  on  Chestnut  Street  counters,  so  extraordinary  that 
the  most  insignificant  details  magnified  themselves  into 
miracles,  to  the  mere  froth  on  top  of  the  cup  of  Vienna 
coffee,  to  the  fatuous  song  of  a  little  Frenchman  in  a 
side-show,  so  that  to  this  day,  if  I  could  turn  a  tune,  I 
could  still  sing  the  "Ah!  Ah!  Nicolas!"  of  its  foolish 
refrain. 

V 
Travelling,  I  should  have  seen  all  the  Centennial  had 
to  show  and  a  thousand  times  more,  but  slowly  and  by 
degrees,  losing  the  sense  of  the  miraculous  with  each  new 
marvel.  The  Centennial  came  as  one  comprehensive 
revelation — overwhelming  evidence  that  the  Philadelphia 
way  was  not  the  only  way.  And  this  I  think  was  a  good 
thing  for  me,  just  as  for  Philadelphia  it  was  a  healthy 
stimulus.  But  the  Centennial  did  not  give  me  a  new  belief 
in  exchange  for  the  old;  it  did  nothing  to  alter  my  life, 
nothing  to  turn  my  sluggish  ambition  into  active  channels. 
And  big  as  it  was,  it  was  not  as  big  as  Philadelphia 
thought,  I  do  believe  that  Philadelphians  who  had  helped 
to  make  it  the  splendid  success  it  proved,  looked  upon  it 
as  no  less  epoch-making  than  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence which  it  commemorated.  But  epoch-making  as 
it  unquestionably  was,  it  was  not  so  epoch-making  as  all 
that.  For  some  years  Philadelphians  had  a  way  of  saying 
"  before  "  and  "  after  "  the  Centennial,  much  as  South- 
erners used  to  talk  of  "before"  and  "after"  the  War: 


2^28  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

with  the  difference  that  for  Philadelphians  all  the  good 
dated  from  "  after."  But  manufacturing  and  commerce 
had  been  heard  of  "  before."  Cramp's  shipyard  did  not 
wait  for  its  first  commission  until  the  Centennial,  neither 
did  Baldwin's  Locomotive  Works,  nor  the  factories  in 
Kensington;  Philadelphia  was  not  so  dead  commercially 
that  it  was  out  of  mere  compliment  important  railroads 
made  it  the  chief  centre  on  their  route.  All  large  Inter- 
national Expositions  are  bound  to  do  good  by  the  increased 
knowledge  that  comes  with  them  of  what  the  world  is  pro- 
ducing and  bj"  the  incentive  this  knowledge  is  to  competi- 
tion, and  as  the  Centennial  was  the  first  held  in  America 
it  probably  accomplished  more  for  the  country  than  those 
that  followed.  But  I  do  not  have  to  be  an  authority  on 
manufacture  and  commerce  to  see  that  they  flourished 
before  the  Centennial;  I  have  learned  enough  about  art 
since  to  know  that  its  existence  was  not  first  revealed 
to  Philadelphia  by  the  Centennial.  The  Exhibition  had 
an  influence  on  art  which  I  am  far  from  undervaluing.  Its 
galleries  of  paintings  and  prints,  drawings  and  sculptures, 
were  an  aid  in  innumerable  ways  to  artists  and  students 
who  previously  had  had  no  facilities  for  seeing  a  repre- 
sentative collection.  It  threw  light  on  the  arts  of  design 
for  the  manufacturer.  But  we  knew  a  thing  or  two  about 
beauty  down  in  Philadelphia  before  1876,  though  beauty 
was  a  subject  to  which  we  had  ceased  to  pay  much  atten- 
tion, and  from  the  Centennial  we  borrowed  too  many 
tastes  and  standards  that  did  not  belong  to  us.     It  set 


THE  BRIDGE  ACROSS  MARKET  STREET  FROM  BROAD  STREET  STATION 


THE  FIRST  AWAKENING  231 

Philadelphia  talking  an  appalling  lot  of  rubbish  about  art, 
and  the  new  affectation  of  interest  was  more  deplorable 
than  the  old  frank  indifference. 

I  was  as  ignorant  of  art  as  the  child  unborn,  but  not 
more  ignorant  than  the  average  Philadelphian.  The  old 
obligatory  visits  to  the  Academy  had  made  but  a  fleeting 
impression  and  I  never  repeated  them  when  the  obligation 
rested  solely  with  me.  I  had  never  met  an  artist,  never 
been  in  a  studio.  The  result  was  that  the  Art  Galleries 
at  the  Centennial  left  me  as  blank  and  bewildered  as  the 
Hall  of  Machiner5^  Of  all  the  paintings,  the  one  I  re- 
membered was  Luke  Fildes's  picture  of  a  milkmaid  which 
I  could  not  forget  because,  in  a  glaring,  plush-framed 
chromo-lithograph,  it  reappeared  promptly  in  Philadel- 
phia dining-  and  bedrooms,  the  most  popular  picture  of 
the  Centennial — a  popularity  in  which  I  can  discern  no 
signs  of  grace.  Nor  can  I  discern  them  in  the  Eastlake 
craze,  in  the  sacrifice  of  reps  and  rosewood  to  INIorris  and 
of  Berlin  work  to  crewels,  in  the  outbreak  of  spinning- 
wheels  and  milking-stools  and  cat's  tails  and  Japanese 
fans  in  the  old  simple,  dignified  Philadelphia  parlour;  in 
the  nightmare  of  wall-papers  with  dadoes  going  half- 
way up  the  wall  and  friezes  coming  halfway  down,  and 
every  square  inch  crammed  full  of  pattern ;  in  the  pretence 
and  excess  of  decoration  that  made  the  early  Victorian 
ornament,  we  had  all  begim  to  abuse,  a  delight  to  the  eye 
in  its  innocent  unpretentiousness.  And  if  to  the  Cen- 
tennial we  owe  the  multiplication  of  our  art  schools,  how 


232  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

many  more  artists  have  come  out  of  them,  how  much  more 
work  that  counts? 

However,  the  good  done  by  the  Centennial  is  not  to  be 
sought  in  the  solid  profits  and  losses  that  can  be  weighed 
in  a  practical  balance.  It  went  deeper,  Philadelphia 
was  the  better  for  being  impressed  with  the  reason  of  its 
own  importance  which  it  had  taken  on  faith,  and  for  being 
reminded  that  the  world  outside  of  Philadelphia  was  not 
a  howling  wilderness.  I,  individually,  gained  by  the 
widening  of  my  horizon  and  the  stirring  of  my  interest. 
But  the  Centennial  did  not  teach  me  how  to  think  about, 
or  use,  what  I  had  learned  from  it.  When  it  was  at  an  end, 
I  returned  placidly  to  my  occupation  of  doing  nothing. 


CHAPTER  X:  THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK 


IN  the  story  of  my  life  in  Philadelphia,  and  my  love 
for  the  town  which  grew  with  my  knowledge  of  it,  my 
beginning  to  work  was  more  than  an  awakening: 
it  was  an  important  crisis.  For  work  first  made  me  know 
Philadelphia  as  it  is  under  the  surface  of  calm  and  the 
beauty  of  age,  first  made  me  realize  how  much  it  offers 
besides  the  social  adventure. 

Personally,  the  Centennial  had  left  me  where  it  found 
me.  It  had  amused  me  vastly,  but  it  had  inspired  me  with 
no  desire  to  make  active  use  of  the  information  and  hints 
of  which  it  had  been  so  prodigal.  My  interest  had  been 
stimulated,  awakened,  but  I  did  not  know  Philadelphia 
any  the  better  for  it,  I  did  not  love  Philadelphia  any  the 
better.  I  had  got  no  further  than  I  was  in  my  scheme 
of  existence,  into  which  work,  or  research,  or  interest,  on 
my  part  had  not  yet  entered,  but  I  had  reached  a  point 
where  that  aimless  scheme  was  an  insufferable  bore.  From 
the  moment  I  began  to  work,  I  began  to  see  everything 
from  the  standpoint  of  work,  and  it  is  wonderful  what  a 
fresh  and  invigorating  standpoint  it  is.  I  began  to  see  that 
everything  was  not  all  of  course  and  matter  of  fact,  that 
everything  was  worth  thinking  about.    Work  is  sometimes 

233 


234  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

said  to  help  people  to  put  things  out  of  their  minds,  but  it 
helps  them  more  when  it  puts  things  into  their  minds,  and 
this  is  what  it  did  for  me.  Through  work  I  discovered 
Philadelphia  and  myself  together. 

II 

It  strikes  me  as  one  of  the  little  ironies  of  life  that  for 
the  first  inducement  to  work,  and  therefore  the  first  in- 
centive to  my  knowledge  and  love  of  Philadelphia,  I  should 
have  been  indebted  to  my  Uncle,  Charles  Godfrey  Leland, 
who,  in  1880,  when  the  Centennial  excitement  was  subsid- 
ing, settled  again  in  Philadelphia  after  ten  years  abroad, 
chiefly  in  England.  Philadelphia  welcomed  him  with  its 
usual  serenity,  betrayed  into  no  expression  of  emotion  by 
the  home-coming  of  one  of  its  most  distinguished  citizens 
who,  in  London,  had  been  received  with  the  open  arms 
London,  in  expansive  moments,  extends  to  the  lion  from 
America.  The  contrast,  no  doubt,  was  annoying,  and  my 
Uncle,  of  whom  patience  could  not  be  said  to  be  the  pre- 
dominating virtue,  was  accordingly  annoyed  and,  on  his 
side,  betrayed  into  anything  but  a  serene  expression  of 
his  annoyance.  Many  smaller  slights  irritated  him  further 
until  he  Avorked  himself  up  into  the  belief  that  he  detested 
Philadelphia,  and  he  was  apt  to  be  so  outspoken  in  criti- 
cism that  he  succeeded  in  convincing  me,  anyway,  that  he 
did.  Later,  when  I  read  his  Memoirs,  I  found  in  them 
passages  that  suggest  the  charm  of  Philadelphia  as  it  has 
not  been  suggested  by  any  other  writer  I  know  of,  and 


STATE  HOUSE  YARD 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  237 

that  he  could  not  have  written  had  he  not  felt  for  the  town 
an  affection  strong  enough  to  withstand  that  town's  easy 
indifference.  But  during  the  few  years  he  spent  in  Phila- 
delphia after  his  return  he  was  uncommonly  successful  in 
hiding  his  affection,  a  fact  which  did  not  add  to  his 
popularity. 

From  his  talk,  I  might  have  been  expected  to  borrow 
nothing  save  dislike  for  Philadelphia.  But  his  influence 
did  not  begin  and  end  with  his  talk.  There  never  was  a 
man — except  J. — who  had  such  a  contempt  for  idle- 
ness and  such  a  talent  for  work.  He  could  not  endure 
people  about  him  who  did  not  work  and,  as  I  was  anxious 
to  enjoy  as  much  of  his  company  as  I  could,  for  I  had 
found  nobody  in  Philadelphia  so  entertaining,  and  as  by 
work  I  might  earn  the  money  to  pay  for  the  independence 
I  wanted  above  all  things,  I  found  myself  working  before 
I  knew  it. 

I  had  my  doubts  when  he  set  me  to  drawing  but,  my 
time  being  wholly  my  own  and  frequently  hanging  drearily 
on  my  hands,  my  ineffectual  attempts  to  make  spirals  and 
curves  with  a  pencil  on  a  piece  of  paper,  attempts  that 
could  not  by  the  wildest  stretch  of  imagination  be  supposed 
to  have  either  an  artistic  or  a  financial  value,  did  not  strike 
me  as  a  disproportionate  price  for  the  pleasure  and 
stimulus  of  his  companionship.  Besides,  he  held  the  com- 
fortable belief  that  anybody  who  willed  to  do  it,  could  do 
anything — accomplishment,  talent,  genius  reduced  by  him 
to  a  question  of  will.    His  will  and  mine  combined,  how- 


238  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

ever,  could  not  make  a  decorative  artist  of  me,  but  he  was 
so  kind  as  not  to  throw  me  over  for  ruthlessly  shattering 
his  favourite  theory.  He  insisted  that  I  should  write  if  I 
could  not  draw. 

I  had  my  doubts  about  writing  too.  I  have  confessed 
that  I  was  not  given  to  thinking  and  1;herefore  I  had  noth- 
ing in  particular  to  say,  nor  were  words  to  say  it  in  at  my 
ready  disposal,  for,  there  being  one  or  two  masters  of  talk 
in  the  immediate  home  circle,  I  had  cultivated  to  the  ut- 
most my  natural  gift  of  silence.  Nor  could  I  forget  two 
literary  ventures  made  immediately  upon  my  leaving  the 
Convent,  before  the  blatant  conceit  of  the  prize  scholar 
had  been  knocked  out  of  me — one,  an  essay  on  rran9ois 
Villon,  my  choice  of  a  maiden  theme  giving  the  measure 
of  my  intelligence,  the  second  a  short  story  re-echoing  the 
last  love  tale  I  had  read — both  MSS.,  neatly  tied  with 
brown  ribbon  to  vouch  for  a  masculine  mind  above  feminine 
pinks  and  blues,  confidently  sent  to  Harper's  and  as  con- 
fidently sent  back  with  the  Editor's  thanks  and  no  delay. 
But  my  Uncle  would  not  let  me  off.  I  must  stick  at  my 
task  of  writing  or  cease  to  be  his  companion,  and  so  relapse 
into  my  old  Desert  of  Sahara,  thrown  back  into  the  colour- 
less life  of  a  Philadelphia  girl  who  did  not  go  out  and  who 
had  waited  to  marry  longer  than  her  parents  thought  con- 
siderate or  correct.  Of  all  my  sins,  of  none  was  I  more 
guiltily  conscious  than  my  failure  to  oblige  my  family  in 
this  respect,  for  of  none  was  I  more  frequently  and  un- 
comfortably reminded  by  my  family.    I  scarcely  ever  went 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  239 

to  see  my  Grandmother  at  this  period  that  from  her 
favourite  perch  on  the  landing  outside  the  dining-room, 
she  did  not  look  at  me  anxiously  and  reproachfully  and 
ask,  "  Any  news  for  me,  my  dear?  "  and  she  did  not  have 
to  tell  me  there  was  but  one  piece  of  news  she  cared  to 
hear. 

Luckily,  writing,  my  substitute  for  marriage,  was  an 
occupation  I  was  free  to  take  up  if  I  chose,  as  the  work  it 
involved  met  with  no  objection  from  my  Father.  It  was 
only  when  work  took  a  girl  where  the  world  could  not  help 
seeing  her  at  it,  that  the  Philadelphia  father  objected.  To 
write  in  the  privacy  of  a  third-story  front  bedroom,  or  of  a 
back  parlour,  seemed  a  ladylike  way  of  wasting  hours  that 
might  more  profitably  have  been  spent  in  paying  calls  and 
going  to  receptions.  If  this  waste  met  with  financial 
return,  it  could  be  hushed  up  and  the  world  be  none  the 
wiser.  The  way  in  which  my  friends  used  to  greet  me 
after  I  was  fairly  launched  is  characteristic  of  the  Phila- 
delphia attitude  in  the  matter — "  always  scribbling  away, 
I  suppose?  "  they  would  say  with  amiable  condescension. 

I  could  not  dismiss  my  scribbling  so  jauntily.  The 
record  of  my  struggles  day  by  day  might  help  to  keep  out 
of  the  profession  of  journalism  and  book-making  many  a 
young  aspirant  as  ardent  as  I  was,  and  with  as  little  to 
say  and  as  few  words  to  say  it  in.  Experience  has  taught 
me  to  feel,  much  as  Gissing  felt,  about  the  "  heavy-laden 
who  sit  down  to  the  cursed  travail  of  the  pen,"  but  no- 
body could  have  made  me  feel  that  way  then,  and  I  am  not 


240  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

sure  I  should  care  to  have  missed  my  struggles,  exhausting 
and  heart-rending  as  they  were.  During  my  apprentice- 
ship when  nothing,  not  so  much  as  a  newspaper  paragraph, 
came  from  my  mountain  of  labour,  the  Philadelphia  sur- 
face of  calm  told  gloomily  on  my  nerves.  Ready  to  lay 
the  blame  anywhere  save  on  my  sluggish  brain,  and  moved 
by  my  Uncle's  vehement  denunciations,  I  vowed  to  my- 
self a  hundred  times  that  a  sleepy  place,  a  dead  place,  like 
Philadelphia  did  not  give  anybody  the  chance  to  do  any- 
thing. I  changed  my  point  of  view  when  at  last  my 
"  scribbling  away  "  got  into  print. 

Ill 

My  first  appearance  was  with  a  chapter  out  of  a  larger 
work  upon  which  I  had  been  engaged  for  months.  My 
Uncle,  whose  ideas  were  big,  had  insisted  that  I  must  begin 
straight  off  with  a  book,  something  monumental,  a 
viagnum  opus;  no  writer  was  known  who  had  not  written  a 
book;  and  to  be  known  was  half  the  battle.  I  was  in  the 
state  of  mind  when  I  would  have  agreed  to  publish  a 
masterpiece  in  hieroglyphics  had  he  suggested  it,  and  I 
arranged  with  him  to  set  to  work  upon  my  book  then  and 
there,  though  I  was  decidedly  puzzled  to  know  with  what 
it  was  to  deal.  I  think  he  was  too,  my  literary  resources 
and  tendencies  not  being  of  the  kind  that  revealed  them- 
selves at  a  glance.  But  he  declared  that  there  was  not 
a  subject  upon  which  a  book  could  not  be  written  if  one 
only  went  about  it  in  the  right  way,  and  in  a  moment  of 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  241 

inspiration,  seeking  the  particular  subject  suitable  to  my 
particular  needs,  he  suddenly,  and  to  me  to  this  day  alto- 
gether incomprehensibly,  hit  upon  Mischief.  There,  now, 
was  a  subject  to  make  one's  reputation  on,  none  could  be 
more  original,  no  author  had  touched  it — what  did  I  think 
of  Mischief? 

What  did  I  think?  Had  I  been  truthful,  I  should  have 
said  that  I  thought  Mischief  was  the  special  attribute  of 
the  naughty  child  who  was  spanked  well  for  it  if  he  got  his 
deserts.  But  I  was  not  truthful.  I  said  it  was  the  subject 
of  subjects,  as  I  inclined  to  believe  it  was  before  I  was 
done  with  it,  by  which  time  I  had  persuaded  myself  to  see 
in  it  the  one  force  that  made  the  world  go  round — the  in- 
centive to  evolution,  the  root  of  the  philosophies  of  the 
ages,  the  clue  to  the  mystery  of  life. 

My  days  were  devoted  to  the  study  of  Mischief  and, 
for  the  purpose,  more  carefully  divided  up  and  regulated 
than  they  ever  had  been  at  the  Convent.  Hours  were  set 
aside  for  research — I  see  myself  and  my  sympathetic 
Uncle  overhauling  dusty  dictionaries  and  encyclopaedias 
at  the  long  table  in  the  balcony  of  the  dusty  Mercantile 
Library  where  nobody  dreamed  of  disturbing  us;  I  see 
him  at  my  side  during  shorter  visits  to  the  Philadelphia 
Library  where  we  were  forever  running  up  against  people 
we  knew  who  did  disturb  us  most  unconscionably;  I  see 
him  tramping  with  me  down  South  Broad  Street  to  the 
Ridgway  Library,  that  fine  mausoleum  of  the  great  collec- 
tions of  James  Logan  and  Dr.  Rush,  where  our  coming 

16 


242  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

awoke  the  attendants  and  exposed  their  awkwardness  in 
waiting  upon  unexpected  readers,  and  brought  Mr.  Lloyd 
Smith  out  of  his  private  room,  excited  and  delighted 
actually  to  see  somebody  in  the  huge  and  well-appointed 
building  besides  himself  and  his  staff.  Hours  were  re- 
served for  reading  at  home,  for  it  turned  out  that  I  could 
not  possibly  arrive  at  the  definition  of  Mischief  without 
a  stupendous  amount  of  reading  in  a  stupendous  variety 
of  books  of  any  and  all  kinds  from  Mother  Goose  to  the 
Vedas  and  the  Koran,  from  Darwin  to  Eliphas  Levi. 
Hours,  and  they  were  the  longest,  were  consecrated  to  my 
writing-table,  putting  the  results  of  research  and  reading 
into  words,  defining  ISIischief  in  its  all-embracing,  universe- 
covering  aspect,  hewing  the  phrases  from  my  unwilling 
brain  as  the  blocks  of  marble  are  hewn  out  of  the  quarry. 
As  I  write,  my  old  MSS.  rises  before  me  like  a  ghost,  a  dis- 
orderly ghost,  erased,  rewritten,  pieces  added  in,  pieces 
cut  out,  every  scratched  and  blotted  line  bearing  testimony 
to  the  toil  that  produced  it.  I  can  see  now  that  I  would 
have  done  better  to  begin  with  a  more  obvious  theme,  com- 
ing more  within  my  limited  knowledge  and  vocabulary. 
My  task  was  too  laborious  for  the  fine  frenzy,  or  the  in- 
spired flights,  reputed  to  be  the  reward  of  the  literary  life. 
It  was  all  downright  hard  labour,  and  so  coloured  my 
whole  idea  of  the  business  of  writing,  that  I  have  never 
yet  managed  to  sit  down  to  my  day's  work  without  the 
feeling  which  I  imagine  must  be  the  navvy's  as  he  starts 
out  for  his  day's  digging  in  the  streets. 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  243 

In  the  course  of  time  order  grew  out  of  the  chaos.  A 
chapter  of  my  monumental  work  on  Mischief  was  finished. 
It  was  made  ready  in  a  neat  copy  with  hardly  an  erasure 
and,  having  an  air  of  completeness  in  itself,  was  sent  as  a 
separate  article  to  Lippincotfs  Magazine,  for  I  decided 
magnanimously  that,  as  I  was  a  Philadelphian,  Philadel- 
phia should  have  the  first  chance.  I  had  no  doubts  of  it  as 
a  prophetic  utterance,  as  a  world-convulsing  message,  but 
the  Editor  of  Lippincotfs  had.    He  refused  it. 

How  it  hurt,  that  prompt  refusal!  All  my  literary 
hopes  came  toppling  over  and  I  saw  myself  condemned  to 
the  old  idleness  and  dependence.  But  our  spirits  when  we 
are  young  go  up  as  quickly  as  they  go  down.  I  recalled 
stories  I  had  heard  of  great  men  hawking  about  their  MSS. 
from  publisher  to  publisher.  Carlyle,  I  said  to  myself,  had 
suffered  and  almost  every  writer  of  note — it  was  a  sign  of 
genius  to  be  refused.  Therefore, — the  logic  of  it  was 
clear  and  convincing — the  refusal  proved  me  a  genius! 
A  more  substantial  reassurance  was  the  publication  of  the 
same  article,  done  over  and  patched  up  and  with  the  fine 
title  of  Mischief  in  the  Middle  Ages,  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  a  very  few  months  later.  And  when,  on  top  of 
this,  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  the  Editor  of  the  Atlantic, 
wrote  and  told  me  he  would  be  pleased  to  have  further 
articles  from  me;  when,  in  answer  to  a  letter  my  Uncle 
had  insisted  on  my  writing,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
promised  me  his  interest  in  Mischief  as  I  proposed  to  de- 
fine it,  I  saw  the  world  at  mv  feet  where,  to  my  sorrow, 


244  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

I  have  never  seen  it  since  that  first  fine  moment  of  elation. 
The  spectacle  of  myself  in  print  set  Philadelphia  danc- 
ing before  my  eyes  and  turned  the  world  a  bit  unsteady. 
But  it  did  not  relieve  the  labour  of  writing.  Within  the 
next  year  or  two  seven  or  eight  chapters  did  get  done  and 
were  published  as  articles  in  the  Atlantic,  but  the  world  is 
still  the  poorer  for  the  magnum  opus  that  was  to  bring  me 
fame.  The  fact  was  that  in  the  making,  it  brought  me 
mighty  little  money.  My  first  cheque  only  whetted  my 
appetite,  but,  in  fairness  to  myself  I  must  explain,  through 
no  more  sordid  motive  than  my  desire  to  become  my  own 
bread-winner.  The  newspapers  offered  a  wider  scope  at 
less  expense  of  time  and  labour,  and  my  Uncle  not  only 
relaxed  so  far  as  to  allow  me  intervals  from  the  bigger 
undertaking  for  simpler  tasks,  but  gave  me  the  benefit  of 
his  experience  as  a  newspaper  man.  In  the  old  days, 
before  he  had  gone  to  live  in  London,  he  had  had  the  run 
of  almost  every  newspaper  office  in  town,  and  he  opened 
their  doors  for  me.  Thanks  to  his  introduction,  Philadel- 
phia, at  this  stage  of  my  progress,  conspired  to  put  work 
into  my  hands,  and  writing  for  Philadelphia  papers  taught 
me  in  a  winter  more  about  Philadelphia  than  I  had  learned 
in  all  the  years  I  had  already  spent  there.  I  marvelled  that 
I  could  have  thought  it  dead  when  it  was  so  alive.  I  seemed 
to  feel  it  quiver  under  my  feet  at  every  step,  shaking  me 
into  speed,  and  filling  me  with  pity  for  the  sedate  pace  at 
which  my  Father  and  the  Philadelphians  of  his  generation 
walked  through  its  pulsating  streets. 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  245 

IV 

My  first  newspaper  commissions  came  from  the  Press 
and  adventure  accompanied  them — the  adventure  of  busi- 
ness letters  in  my  morning's  mail,  of  proofs,  of  visits  to  the 
office — adventures  that  far  too  soon  became  the  common- 
places of  my  busy  days  as  journalist.  But  my  outlook 
upon  life  in  Philadelphia  had,  up  till  then,  been  bounded  by 
the  brick  walls  of  a  Spruce  Street  house,  and  the  editorial 
office,  that  holds  no  surprise  for  me  now,  held  nothing  save 
surprise  when  I  was  first  summoned  to  it.  I  was  be- 
wildered by  the  disorder,  stunned  by  the  noise — boys  com- 
ing and  going,  letters  and  telegrams  pouring  in,  piles  of 
proofs  mounting  up  on  the  desk,  baskets  overflowing  with 
MSS.,  floors  strewn  with  papers,  machinery  throbbing 
close  by,  a  heavy  smell  of  tobacco  over  everything,  and  in 
the  midst  of  the  confusion — lounging,  working,  answering 
questions,  tearing  open  letters  and  telegrams,  correcting 
proof,  and  yet  managing  to  talk  with  me, — Moses  P. 
Handy,  the  editor,  a  red  man  in  my  memory  of  him,  red 
hair,  red  beard,  red  cheeks,  whose  cordiality  I  could  not 
flatter  myself  was  due  to  his  eagerness  for  my  contribu- 
tions, so  engrossed  was  he  in  talking  of  the  Eastern  Shore 
of  Maryland  from  which  he  came  and  in  which  my  family 
had  made  their  prolonged  stay  on  the  way  from  Virginia 
to  Philadelphia.  The  Eastern  Shore  may  be  a  good  place 
to  come  away  from,  but  the  native  never  forgets  that  he 
did  come  from  it  and  he  never  fails  to  hail  his  fellow  exile 
as  brother. 


246  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

My  next  commission  I  owed  to  the  Evening  Tele- 
graph, for  which  I  made  a  remarkable  journey  to  Atlantic 
City :  a  voyage  of  discovery,  though  the  report  of  it  did  not 
paralyse  the  Philadelphia  public.  I  was  deeply  impressed 
by  my  exercise  of  my  faculty  of  observation  thus  tested 
on  familiar  ground,  but  I  am  afraid  it  left  the  Editor  in- 
different, and,  as  in  his  case  the  Eastern  Shore  was  not  a 
friendly  link  between  us,  he  expressed  no  desire  for  a 
second  article  or  for  a  second  visit.  I  have  regretted  it 
since,  the  Editor  being  Clarke  Davis,  whom  not  to  know 
was,  I  believe,  not  to  have  arrived  so  far  in  Philadelphia 
journalism  as  I  liked  to  think  I  had. 

A  more  remarkable  journey  followed  to  New  York 
for  I  wish  I  could  remember  what  paper;  or  perhaps  it  is 
just  as  well  I  cannot,  the  adventure  adding  to  the  reputa- 
tion neither  of  the  paper  nor  of  myself.  The  object  was  to 
attend  the  press  view  of  an  important  exhibition  of  paint- 
ings, and  at  that  stage  of  my  education  I  doubt  if  I  could 
have  told  a  R«nbrandt  from  a  Rubens,  much  less  a  Ken- 
yon  Cox  from  a  Church,  a  Chase  from  a  Blum,  which  was 
more  immediately  to  the  point.  I  had  my  punishment  on 
the  spot,  for  my  hours  in  the  Gallery  may  be  counted  the 
most  humiliating  of  my  life.  My  ignorance  would  not  let 
me  lose  sight  of  it  for  one  little  second.  J.  had  gone  with 
me — how  I  came  to  know  him  I  mean  to  tell  further  on — 
but  he  had  no  press  ticket,  a  stern  man  at  the  door  refused 
to  admit  him  without  one,  and  I  was  alone  in  my  incom- 


'  w, 


4?A 


Tin;'  i    I  / 1\ 


jst'.-iJSi'tE: : 


THE  PENITENTIARY 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  249 

petency  to  wrestle  with  it  as  I  could.  Had  he  not  returned 
with  me  to  Philadelphia  in  the  afternoon  and  devoted 
the  interval  in  the  train  to  throwing  light  upon  my  obscure 
and  agonised  notes,  my  copy  could  not  have  been  delivered 
that  evening  as  agreed.  I  know  now  that  the  paper  would 
have  come  out  all  the  same  the  next  morning,  but  in  my 
misery  it  did  not  seem  possible  that  it  could,  and  besides 
I  was  from  the  first,  as  through  my  many  years  of  journal- 
ism, scrupulous  to  be  on  time  with  my  copy  and  to  keep  to 
my  agreements.  That  was  my  first  experience  in  art 
criticism.  I  have  tried  to  atone  for  it  by  years  of  con- 
scientious work,  but  few  Philadelphia  papers  can  say  as 
much  for  themselves.  In  those  I  see  from  time  to  time,  the 
art  criticism  usually  reads  as  if  Philadelphia  editors  had 
lost  nothing  of  their  old  amiability  in  handing  it  over  to 
young  ladies  to  get  their  journalistic  training  on. 

I  was  given  also  my  chance  in  two  newspaper  ventures 
Philadelphia  made  in  the  early  Eighteen-Eighties.  One 
was  the  American,  a  weekly  on  the  lines  of  the  New  York 
Nation.  Mr.  Howard  Jenkins,  the  editor,  sent  me  books 
for  review,  and  not  the  first  baby,  not  the  first  baby's  first 
tooth,  could  be  as  extraordinary  a  phenomenon  as  the  first 
book  sent  for  the  purpose  from  the  editorial  oflfice.  Mine, 
as  I  have  never  forgotten,  as  I  never  could  forget,  was 
Howard  Pyle's  Robin  Hood,  and  when  Mr.  Jenkins  wrote 
me  that  "  Mr.  Pyle's  folks  "  were  pleased  with  what  I  had 
written,  I  thought  I  had  got  to  the  very  top  of  the  tree 


250  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

of  journalism.  That  I  had  got  no  furtlier  than  a  step  from 
the  bottom,  and  upon  that  had  none  too  secure  a  foothold, 
I  was  reminded  when  the  second  book  for  review  lay  open 
before  me. 

The  other  venture  was  Our  Continent,  also  a  weekly, 
but  illustrated,  edited  by  Judge  Tourgee.  Of  my  con- 
tributions, I  remember  chiefly  an  article  on  Shop  Win- 
dows, which  suggests  that  I  was  busy  with  what  I  might 
call  a  more  pretentious  kind  of  reporting.  My  subjects 
and  my  manner  of  treating  them  maj'  have  been  what 
they  were, — of  no  special  value  to  anybody  but  myself. 
But  to  myself  I  cannot  exaggerate  their  value.  I  was 
learning  from  them  all  the  time. 

It  was  an  education  just  to  learn  what  a  newspaper 
was.  Heretofore  I  had  accepted  it  as  a  thing  that  came 
of  itself,  arriving  in  the  morning  with  the  milk  and  the 
rolls  for  breakfast.  I  knew  as  little  of  its  origin  as  the 
town  boy  knew  of  where  the  milk  comes  from  in  the  Punch 
story  that  I  do  not  doubt  was  old  when  Punch  was  young. 
Milk  he  had  always  seen  poured  from  a  can,  our  newspaper 
we  had  always  had  from  the  nearest  news-agent.  It  was 
very  simple.  A  newspaper  appeared  on  the  breakfast- 
table  of  a  well-regulated  Philadelphia  house  just  as  the 
water  ran  when  the  tap  was  turned  on  in  the  bath-room,  or 
the  gas  burned  when  lit  by  a  match.  But  after  one  article, 
after  one  visit  to  a  newspaper  office,  after  one  journey  to 
Atlantic  City  or  New  York,  the  newspaper  did  not  seem 
so  simple.    I  began  to  understand  that  it  would  not  have 


ON  THE  READING,  AT  SIXTEENTH  STREET 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  253 

got  as  far  as  Spruce  Street  had  it  not  been  for  an  army 
of  people  writing,  printing,  correcting  proof,  tearing  from 
one  end  of  the  town — of  the  world — to  the  other ;  without 
colossal  machinery  throbbing  night  and  day,  without  an 
immeasurable  consumption  of  tobacco.  I  began  to  under- 
stand the  organization  required  to  bring  the  army  of 
people  and  the  colossal  machines  into  such  perfect  har- 
mony that  the  daily  miracle  of  the  newspaper  on  the  break- 
fast-table might  be  worked — ^to  understand  too  that  the 
miracle-working  organization  had  not  been  created  in  a 
day,  that  behind  the  daily  paper  was  not  merely  the  toiling 
of  its  staff  and  its  machines  but  a  long  history  of  striving, 
experiment,  development. 

I  cannot  say  I  went  profoundly  into  the  history,  I  was 
too  engrossed  in  contributing  my  delightful  share  to  the 
newspaper  as  it  was,  but  to  go  superficially  sufficed  to  show 
me  in  Philadelphia  a  spirit  of  enterprise  altogether  new 
to  me.  I  had  discovered  only  shortly  before  Philadelphia 
as  the  scene  of  the  first  Colonial  Congress,  and  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence,  and  the  first  big  International 
Exposition  in  America,  and  now  I  added  to  these  other 
discoveries  the  fact  that  Philadelphia  had  been  the  first 
American  town  to  publish  a  daily  paper,  the  last  discovery 
bringing  me  face  to  face  with  Benjamin  Franklin  who,  it 
appeared,  besides  flying  that  tiresome  kite  and  being  the 
ancestor  of  Mrs.  Gillespie,  was  the  first  printer  and  pub- 
lisher of  the  paper  that  set  an  example  for  all  America. 
Tranquil  the  Philadelphian  was  by  repute,  but  he  rolled 


254  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

up  his  sleeves  and  pitched  in  when  the  moment  came. 
Philadelphia's  famous  calm  was  but  skin  deep  over  its 
seething  mass  of  workers,  its  energy,  its  toiling,  its 
triumph.  When  I  reflected  on  what  was  going  on  at  night 
in  every  newspaper  office  in  town,  it  seemed  to  me  as  un- 
believable that,  on  the  verge  of  this  volcano  of  work,  Phila- 
delphians  could  keep  on  dancing  at  parties,  at  the  Dancing 
Class,  at  the  Assembly,  as  that  men  and  women  should 
have  danced  at  Brussels  on  the  eve  of  Waterloo,  And 
newspaper-making  was  one  only  of  Philadelphia's  in- 
numerable industries.  That  thought  gave  me  the  scale  of 
the  labour  that  goes  to  keep  the  machinery  of  life  running. 


Of  some  of  the  other  industries  I  got  to  know  a  little. 
My  Uncle  who,  as  I  have  said,  was  a  man  of  ideas  and 
who  had  his  fair  proportion  of  Philadelphia  energy,  in- 
cluded among  his  many  interests  the  subject  of  education. 
He  deplored  existing  systems  and  methods.  My  belief 
is  that  the  systems  and  methods  might  be  of  the  best  and 
education  would  still  be  a  mistake,  vulgarizing  the  multi- 
tude to  whom  it  does  not  belong  and  encouraging  in  them 
a  prejudice  against  honest  work.  My  Uncle  did  not  think 
as  I  do, — that  I  do  not  think  now  as  he  did  frightens  me  as 
a  disloyalty  to  his  memory.  But  he  could  not  overlook  the 
distaste  for  manual  work  that  had  grown  out  of  too  much 
attention  to  books  and  as  he  never  let  his  theories  exhaust 


f 


/>'     •' 


■>'^^1+> 


S&    , 


^.f    '. 


-:-r4 


"'■    - -Y,«  <^-r>-^"  "x 


-l-^   ?st«|^a^! 


3  Hiik/^s?/ 


LOCUST  STREET  EAST  FROM  BROAD  STREET 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  257 

themselves  in  words,  he  lost  no  time  in  persuading  the 
Board  of  Education  to  put  this  particular  one  to  a  practi- 
cal test.  Doubts  of  their  methods  had  assailed  the  Board, 
but  no  way  out  of  the  difficulty  had  been  suggested  until 
he  came  and  said,  "  Set  your  children,  your  boys  and  girls, 
who  are  forgetting  how  to  use  their  hands,  to  work  at  the 
Minor  Arts."  It  struck  them  as  a  suggestion  that 
warranted  the  experiment  anyway,  especially  as  the  cost 
would  be  comparatively  small.  My  Uncle  had  been  back 
in  Philadelphia  not  much  more  than  a  year  when  classes 
were  put  in  his  charge  and  a  schoolroom — the  school- 
house  at  Broad  and  Locust — at  his  disposal,  and  he 
inaugurated  the  study  of  the  Arts  and  Crafts  in  Philadel- 
phia with  the  Industrial  Art  School,  as  he  had  in  London 
with  the  Home  Arts.  His  sole  payment  was  the  pleasure 
of  the  experiment,  a  pleasure  which  few  theorists  succeed 
in  securing.  I,  however,  was  paid  by  the  City  in  solid 
dollars  and  cents  for  the  fine  amateurish  inefficiency  with 
which  I  helped  him  to  manage  the  classes,  recommended 
by  him,  Mhose  consideration  was  as  practical  for  my 
pockets  which  the  Atlantic,  backed  by  newspapers,  had  not 
filled  to  repletion. 

This  is  not  the  place  for  the  history  of  his  experiment. 
It  is  known.  The  school  has  passed  from  the  experimental 
stage  into  a  permanent  institution,  though  in  the  passing 
my  Uncle  has  been  virtually  forgotten, — often  the  fate  of 
the  man  who  sets  a  ball  of  reform  rolling.     Of  all  this  I 

17 


258  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

have  elsewhere  made  the  record.  I  am  at  present  con- 
cerned with  the  influence  the  school  had  upon  me  and  the 
unexpected  extent  to  which  it  widened  my  knowledge  of 
Philadelphia  and  Philadelphia  activities. 

How  Philadelphia  was  educated  was  not  a  question 
that  had  kept  me  awake  at  nights.  The  Philadelphia  girl 
of  my  acquaintance,  if  a  day  scholai",  went  naturally  to 
Miss  Irwin's  or  to  Miss  Annabel's  in  town;  if  a  boarder 
perhaps  to  Miss  Chapman's  at  Holmesburg  or  Mrs.  Come- 
gys  at  Chestnut  Hill;  unless  her  parents  were  converts  or 
Catholics  by  birth  when  she  went  instead  to  the  Convent  of 
the  Sacred  Heart  at  Torresdale  or  in  Walnut  Street.  The 
Philadelphia  boy  began  with  the  Episcopal  Academy  and 
finished  with  the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  Friends 
went  to  the  Friends'  School  in  Germantown,  and  to 
Swarthmore  and  Haverford.  What  others  did,  did  not 
matter.  I  had  heard  there  were  public  or  free  schools 
where  children  could  go  for  nothing,  but  nobody  to  my 
knowledge  went  to  them.  With  what  insolence  we  each  of 
us,  in  our  own  little  fraction  of  the  world,  think  everybody 
outside  of  it  nobody!  But  up  in  the  top  story  rooms  of 
the  school-house  at  Broad  and  Locust,  where  my  work  took 
me  two  afternoons  in  the  week,  I  found  myself  the  centre 
of  a  vast  network  of  schools!  High  Schools,  Grammar 
Schools,  Primary  Schools,  Scholarships,  more  divisions  and 
subdivisions  than  I  could  count;  with  teachers — for  there 
was  a  class  for  teachers — and  pupils  coming  from  every 
ward  and  suburb,  every  street  and  alley  of  the  town;  a 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  259 

School  Board  keeping  a  watchful  eye  upon  schools  and 
teachers,  not  leaving  me  out;  and  all  about  me  a  vast 
population  without  one  idea  or  interest  except  the  educa- 
tion of  Philadelphia.  And  this  implied,  like  the  news- 
paper, a  perfect  organization  of  its  own  to  keep  the  whole 
thing  going — an  organization  that  never  could  have  been 
born  in  a  day.  The  education  of  Philadelphia  had 
absorbed  a  vast  population  since  Philadelphia  was:  the 
first  Philadelphia  children  hardly  escaping  from  their  cave 
dwellings  before  they  were  hurried  into  school  to  have 
their  poor,  little  minds  trained  and  disciplined.  Really, 
in  my  first  days  of  work,  life  was  a  succession  of  startling 
discoveries  about  Philadelphia. 

I  could  not  get  paid  for  my  afternoons  at  the  school, 
which  I  ought  to  have  paid  for  considering  the  education 
they  were  to  me,  without  making  another  discovery.  The 
pay  came  monthly  from  the  City  in  the  form  of  a  warrant, 
or  so  I  believe  it  is  called.  As  I  have  explained  that  I  had 
never  been  possessed  of  money  of  my  own,  some  allowance 
will  be  made  for  my  stupidity  in  thinking  it  necessary  to 
cash  the  warrant  in  person.  It  never  occurred  to  me  to 
open  a  bank  account  or  to  ask  m}^  Father  to  exchange  the 
warrant  for  money.  I  went  myself  to  the  office  in  the  big, 
new,  unfinished  City  Hall — how  well  I  remember,  when 
I  was  kept  waiting  which  was  always,  my  conscientiousness 
in  jotting  down  elaborate  notes  of  windows  and  doors  and 
upholstery  and  decoration:  Zola  in  France  and  Howells 
at  home  having  made  Realism  the  literary  fashion,  and 


260  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Realism,  I  gathered,  being  achieved  only  by  way  of  jotting 
down  endless  notes  in  every  situation  in  which  I  found 
myself;  especially  as  J.  had  brought  back  from  Italy  ex- 
emplary and  inspiring  tales  of  Vernon  Lee  (Violet  Paget) 
and  Mary  Robinson  (Mme.  Duclaux) ,  with  whom  he  had 
worked  and  travelled,  filling  blank  books  with  memoranda 
collected  from  the  windows  of  every  train  they  took  and 
every  hotel  in  which  they  stayed. 

I  am  glad  I  was  stupid,  such  a  good  thing  for  me  was 
this  going  in  person,  such  a  suggestive  lesson  in  City 
Government  which  I  learned  was  as  little  of  an  automatic 
arrangement  as  education  and  the  newspaper,  and  not 
necessarily  something  that  all  decent  people  should  be 
ashamed  of  being  mixed  up  with,  the  way  my  Father  and 
the  old-fashioned  Philadelphian  of  his  type  looked  upon  it 
and  every  other  variety  of  Government.  It  was  just  an- 
other huge,  busy,  striving,  toiling  organization,  so  huge 
as  to  fit  with  difficulty  into  the  enormous  ugly  new  build- 
ings, then  recently  set  down  for  it  in  Penn  Square  with 
complete  indifference  to  Penn's  plan  for  his  green  country 
town,  or  to  get  its  work  done  in  the  maze  of  courts  and 
passages  and  offices  by  the  hordes  of  big  and  little  officials 
no  less  preoccupied  in  City  Government  than  journalists 
in  their  newspaper,  or  teachers  in  their  school,  or — out- 
rageous as  it  may  sound — society  in  the  Assembly  and 
Dancing  Class  and  the  things  which  I  had  been  brought 
up  to  believe  the  beginning  and  end  of  existence  on  this 
earth. 


-^ 


BROAD  STREET,  LOOKING  SOUTH  FROM  ABOVE  ARCH  STREET 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  263 

My  new  knowledge  of  Philadelphia  was  widened  in 
various  other  directions  as  time  went  on.  My  Uncle's 
experiment,  when  it  took  practical  shape,  attracted  atten- 
tion and  he  was  asked  to  lecture  on  it  in  places  like  the 
Franklin  Institute — there  was  no  keeping  away  very 
long  from  Benjamin  Franklin  in  Philadelphia  once  I  got 
to  know  anything  about  Philadelphia — and  to  visit  institu- 
tions like  Moyamensing  Prison  or  Kirkbride's  Insane 
Asylum  that  he  might  consider  the  advisability  of  intro- 
ducing his  scheme  of  manual  work  for  the  benefit  of  the 
insane  and  the  criminal.  I  usually  accompanied  him  on 
these  occasions,  and  before  he  had  got  through  his  rounds 
I  had  seen  a  number  of  different  phases  of  Philadelphia 
activity  and  enterprise  and  power  of  organization.  I  had 
been  given  some  idea  of  the  armies  of  doctors  and  nurses 
and  scientists  who  had  made  Kirkbride's  a  model  through- 
out the  land,  while  Dr.  Albert  Smith  had  helped  me  to 
an  additional  insight  into  the  hospitals  that  set  as  excel- 
lent an  example.  I  had  been  given  an  idea  of  the  armies 
of  judges  and  juries  and  police  and  governors  and  warders 
and  visiting  inspectors, — of  whom  my  Father  was  one, 
with  a  special  tenderness  for  murderers  whom  he  used  to 
take  his  family  to  visit — at  Moyamensing.  And  from  the 
combination  of  all  my  new  experiences  I  had  gained 
further  knowledge  of  the  energies  at  work  beyond  the 
limits  of  "  Chestnut,  Walnut,  Spruce  and  Pine  "  to  make 
Philadelphia  what  it  was. 


264  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

VI 

I  ought  to  have  needed  no  guide  to  the  knowledge  and 
appreciation  of  these  things,  it  may  be  said.  I  admit  it. 
But  the  happy  mortals  who  are  born  observant  do  not 
picture  to  themselves  the  tortures  gone  through  by  those 
who  must  have  observation  thrust  upon  them  before  they 
begin  to  use  their  eyes.  I  had  not  been  born  to  observe, 
I  had  not  been  trained  to  observe,  and  to  become  observant 
I  had  to  go  through  the  sort  of  practical  course  Mr. 
Squeers  set  to  his  boys.  His  method,  denounce  it  as  you 
will,  has  its  merits.  The  students  of  Dotheboys  Hall 
could  never  have  forgotten  what  a  window  is  or  what  it 
means  to  clean  it.  I  had  grown  up  to  accept  life  as  a 
pageant  for  me  to  look  on  at,  with  no  part  to  play  in  it. 
After  my  initiation  into  work,  I  could  never  forget,  in  the 
quietest,  emptiest  sections  of  the  town,  not  even  in  placid 
little  backwaters  like  Clinton  Street  and  De  Lancey 
Place,  the  machinery  forever  crashing  and  grinding  and 
roaring  to  produce  the  pageant,  to  weave  for  Philadelphia 
the  beautiful  serenity  it  wore  like  a  garment.  I  could 
never  forget  that,  insignificant  as  my  share  in  the  ma- 
chinery might  be,  all  the  same  I  was  contributing  some- 
thing to  make  it  go.  I  could  never  be  sure  that  everybody 
I  met,  however  calm  in  appearance,  might  not  be  as  mixed 
up  in  the  great  machine  of  work  as  I  was  beginning  to  be. 

I  had  to  work  to  learn  that  Philadelphia  had  worked, 
and  still  worked,  and  worked  so  well  as  to  be  the  first  to 


CLINTON  STREET,  WITH  THE  PENNSYLVANIA  HOSPITAL  AT  ITS  END 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  WORK  267 

have  given  America  much  that  is  best  and  most  vital  in  the 
country — the  first  to  show  the  right  way  with  its  schools 
and  hospitals  and  libraries  and  newspapers  and  galleries 
and  museums,  the  leader  in  the  fight  for  liberty  of  con- 
science, the  scene  of  the  first  Colonial  Congress  and  the 
signing  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  the  Cen- 
tennial Exposition  to  commemorate  it,  a  pioneer  in  science 
and  industry  and  manufacture — a  town  upon  which  all  the 
others  in  the  land  could  not  do  better  than  model  them- 
selves— while  all  the  time  it  maintained  its  fine  air  of  calm 
that  perplexes  the  stranger  and  misleads  the  native.  But 
I  had  found  it  out,  found  out  its  greatness,  before  age  had 
dimmed  my  perceptions  and  dulled  my  power  of  apprecia- 
tion; and  to  find  Philadelphia  out  is  to  love  it. 


CHAPTER  XI:  THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK 

I 

I  WAS  still  in  the  stage  of  wonder  and  joy  at  seeing 
myself  in  print,  when  work  and  Philadelphia  joined 
in  the  most  unlooked  for  manner  to  help  me  tell  my 
Grandmother  that  "  something "  she  was  so  anxiously 
waiting  to  hear.  An  article  on  Philadelphia  which  an  in- 
telligent Editor  asked  me  to  write  was  my  introduction  to 
J.  The  town  that  we  both  love  first  brought  us  to- 
gether, as  it  now  brings  us  back  to  it  together  after  the 
many  years  that  have  passed  since  it  laid  the  foundation 
of  our  long  partnership. 

I  would  say  nothing  about  the  article  at  this  late  date 
had  it  not  added  so  materially  to  my  life  and  to  my  knowl- 
edge of  Philadelphia.  I  am  not  proud  of  it  as  a  piece  of 
literary  work.  But  it  seems,  as  I  recall  the  days  of  my 
apprenticeship,  to  mark  the  turning  of  the  ways,  to  point 
to  the  new  road  I  was  destined  to  take.  I  got  it  out  the 
other  day,  the  first  time  in  over  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
proposing  to  reprint  it,  thinking  the  contrast  between  my 
impressions  of  Philadelphia  thirty  years  ago  and  my  im- 
pressions of  Philadelphia  to-day  might  be  amusing.  In 
memory,  it  had  remained  a  brilliant  performance,  one  any 
editor  would  be  pleased  to  jump  at,  and  I  was  astonished  to 
find  it  youthful  and  crude,  inarticulate,  inadequate  not 

268 


vXT-^H^til^^ 


THE  CHERRY  STREET  STAIRS  NEAR  THE  RIVER 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  271 

only  to  the  subject  itself  but  to  my  appreciation  of  the 
subject  which  at  the  time  was  unbounded.  I  do  not  know 
whether  to  be  more  amazed  at  my  failure  in  it  to  say  what 
I  wanted  to  say,  or  at  the  Editor's  amiability  in  publish- 
ing it.  The  article  may  not  have  lost  all  its  eloquence  for 
me,  since  between  the  halting  lines  I  can  read  the  story 
I  did  not  know  how  to  tell,  but  for  others  it  would  prove 
a  dull  affair  and  it  is  best  left  where  it  is,  forgotten  in  the 
old  files  of  a  popular  magazine. 

The  story  I  read  is  one  of  a  series  of  discoveries  with 
a  romance  in  each.  The  way  the  article  came  about  was 
that  J.  had  made  etchings  of  Philadelphia,  and  the 
Editor,  who  had  wisel}'^  arranged  to  use  them,  thought  they 
could  not  be  published  without  accompanying  text.  When 
he  asked  me,  as  a  young  Philadelphian  just  beginning  to 
write,  to  supply  this  text,  he  advised  me  to  consult  with 
J.,  whom  I  did  not  know  and  whose  studio  address  he 
gave  me. 

I  was  thrilled  by  the  prospect,  never  having  been  in  a 
studio  nor  met  an  artist,  and  when  it  turned  out  not  half  so 
simple  as  it  looked  on  paper,  when  the  first  catching  my 
artist  was  attended  with  endless  delays  and  difficulties,  it 
did  not  lessen  the  thrill  or  take  away  from  the  sense  of 
adventure. 

J.'s  studio,  which  he  shared  with  Mr.  Harry  Poore, 
was  at  the  top  of  what  was  then  the  Presbyterian  Building 
on  Chestnut  Street  above  Thirteenth,  quite  new  and 
of  tremendous  height   at   a   time   when  the   sky-scraper 


272  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

had  not  been  invented  nor  the  elevator  become  a  necessity 
of  Philadelphia  life.  Day  after  day,  varjnng  the  hour 
with  each  attempt,  now  in  the  morning,  now  at  noon,  now 
toward  evening,  I  toiled  up  those  long  flights  of  stairs, 
marvelling  at  the  strange,  unaccountable  disclosures 
through  half -opened  studio  doors,  for  it  was  a  building  of 
studios;  glad  of  the  support  of  my  Uncle  who  was  seeing 
me  through  this,  as  he  saw  me  through  all  my  earliest 
literary  enterprises;  arriving  at  the  top,  breathless  and 
panting,  only  to  be  informed  by  a  notice,  written  on  paper 
and  pinned  on  the  tight-locked  door,  that  J.  was  out  and 
would  be  back  in  half  an  hour.  My  Uncle  and  I  were 
inclined  to  interpret  this  literally,  once  or  twice  waiting 
trustingly  on  the  dark  landing  some  little  while  beyond  the 
appointed  time.  On  one  occasion  I  believe  the  door  was 
opened,  when  we  knocked,  by  Mr.  Poore  who  was  not  sure 
of  the  length  of  a  half  hour  as  J.  reckoned  it,  but  had  an 
idea  it  might  vary  according  to  circumstances,  especially 
now  that  J.  was  out  of  town.  I  went  away  not  annoyed  as 
I  should  be  to-day,  but  more  stirred  than  ever  by  the 
novelty  of  the  adventure. 

At  last  I  tied  J.  down  by  an  appointment,  as  I  should 
have  done  at  the  start,  and  he,  having  returned  to  town, 
kept  it  to  the  minute.  I  think  from  first  to  last  of  this 
astonishing  business  I  had  no  greater  shock  of  astonish- 
ment than  when  I  followed  him  into  his  studio.  We  were 
in  the  Eighteen-Eighties  then,  when  American  magazines 
and  newspapers  were  making  sensational  copy  out  of  the 


y^ 


THE  MORRIS  HOUSE  ON  EIGHTH  STREET 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  275 

princely  splendour  of  the  London  studios,  above  all  of 
Tadema's,  Leighton's,  Millais':  palatial  interiors,  hung 
with  priceless  tapestries,  carpeted  with  rare  Oriental  rugs, 
shining  with  old  brass  and  pottery  and  armour,  opening 
upon  Moorish  courts,  reached  by  golden  stairs,  fragrant 
with  flowers,  filled  with  soft  couches  and  luxurious 
cushions — flamboyant,  exotic  interiors  that  would  not  have 
disgraced  Ouida's  godlike  young  Guardsmen  but  that 
scarcely  seemed  to  belong  to  men  who  made  their  living 
by  the  work  of  their  hands.  Indeed,  it  was  their  splendour 
that  misled  so  many  incompetent  young  men  and  women 
of  the  later  Victorian  age  into  the  belief  that  art  was  the 
easiest  and  most  luxurious  short  cut  to  wealth.  But  there 
was  nothing  splendid  or  princely  about  J.'s  studio.  It 
was  frankly  a  workshop,  big  and  empty,  a  few  unframed 
drawings  and  life  studies  stuck  up  on  the  bare  walls,  the 
floors  carpetless,  for  furniture  an  easel  or  two  and  a  few 
odd  rickety  chairs — a  room  nobody  would  have  dreamed 
of  going  into  except  for  work.  But  then,  my  first  im- 
pression of  J.  was  of  a  man  who  did  not  want  to  do  any- 
thing except  work. 

My  experience  had  been  that  people — if  I  leave  out  my 
Uncle — worked,  not  because  they  wanted  to  but  because 
they  had  to  and  that,  sceptical  as  they  might  be  on  every 
other  Scriptural  point,  they  were  not  to  be  shaken  out  of 
their  belief  in  work  as  a  curse  inherited  from  Adam.  J., 
evidently,  would  have  found  the  curse  in  not  being  allowed 
to  work.     And  as  new  to  me  was  the  enthusiasm  with 


276  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

which,  while  he  showed  me  his  prints  and  drawings,  he 
began  to  talk  about  Philadelphia  and  its  beauty.  It  was 
unusual  for  Philadelphians  to  talk  about  their  town  at  all ; 
if  they  did,  it  was  more  unusual  for  them  to  talk  with 
enthusiasm;  and  the  interest  in  it  forced  upon  them  by 
the  Centennial  had  been  for  every  qi^ality  rather  than  its 
beauty.  Even  my  Uncle — though  later,  in  his  Memoirs^ 
he  wrote  charmingly  of  the  charm  of  Philadelphia — at 
that  time  affected  to  admire  nothing  in  it  except  the  un- 
sightly arches  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  bridging 
the  streets  between  the  Schuylkill  and  the  Station,  and 
if  he  made  the  exception  in  their  favour,  it  was  because 
they  reminded  him  of  London.  Thanks  to  the  Centennial 
and  the  stimulus  of  hard  work,  I  was  not  as  ignorant  of 
Philadelphia  as  I  had  been,  but  I  was  not  rid  of  the  old 
popular  fallacy  that  the  American  in  search  of  beauty 
must  cross  the  Atlantic  and  go  to  Europe.  And  here  was 
J.,  in  five  minutes  telling  me  more  about  Philadelphia 
than  I  had  learned  in  a  lifetime,  revealing  to  me  in  his 
drawings  the  beauty  of  streets  and  houses  I  had  not  had 
the  wit  to  find  out  for  myself,  firing  me  with  sudden 
enthusiasm  in  my  turn,  convincing  me  that  nothing  in  the 
world  counted  but  Philadelphia,  opening  my  eyes  to  its 
unsuspected  resources,  so  that  after  this  I  could  walk 
nowhere  without  visions  of  romance  where  all  before  had 
been  everyday  commonplace,  leaving  me  eager  and  im- 
patient to  start  on  my  next  journey  of  discovery  which 
was  to  be  in  his  company. 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  277 

II 

To  illustrate  our  article — for  ours  it  had  become — J. 
passed  over  the  obvious  picturesqueness  of  Philadelphia — 
the  venerable  Pennsylvania  Hospital,  the  beautiful  State 
House,  Christ  Church,  the  Old  Swedes,  St.  Peter's — 
buildings  for  which  Philadelphia,  after  years  of  indiffer- 
ence, had  at  last  been  exalted  by  the  Centennial  into  his- 
toric monuments,  the  show  places  of  the  town,  labelled  and 
catalogued — ^buildings  of  which  J.  had  already  made 
records,  having  begun  his  work  by  drawing  them,  his  plate 
of  the  State  House  among  the  first  he  ever  etched.  He 
now  went  in  preference  to  the  obscure  by-ways,  to  the 
unpretending  survivals  of  the  past,  so  merged,  so 
swallowed  up  in  the  present,  that  it  needed  keen  eyes  to 
detect  them:  old  buildings  stamped  with  age,  but  too 
humble  in  origin  for  the  Centennial  to  have  resurrected; 
busy  docks,  grimy  river  banks,  crazy  old  rookeries 
abandoned  to  the  business  and  poverty  that  claimed  them: 
to  the  strange,  neglected,  never-visited  corners  of  a  great 
town  where  beauty  springs  from  the  rich  soil  of  labour 
and  chance,  neglect  and  decay. 

How  little  I  had  known  of  Philadelphia  up  till  then! 
One  of  the  very  first  places  to  which  he  took  me  was  the  old 
Second  Street  Market  that,  when  I  lived  within  a  stone's 
throw  of  it,  I  had  never  set  my  eyes  on — the  old  market 
that,  south  of  Pine,  forces  Second  Street  to  widen  and 
make  space  for  it  and  that  turns  the  gable  of  the  little  old 


278  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Court  House  directlj'  north,  breaking  the  long  vista  of  the 
street  as  St.  Clement's  and  St,  Marj^'s  in  London  break 
the  vista  of  the  Strand — the  old  market  that  I  believe  the 
city  proposes  to  pull  down,  very  likely  will  have  pulled 
down  before  these  lines  are  in  print,  though  there  is  not  a 
Philadelphian  who  would  not  go  into  ecstasies  over  as 
shabby  and  down-at-the-heel  Eighteenth  Century  building 
if  stumbled  upon  in  an  English  country  town.  And  as 
close  to  his  old  family  home  and  mine  J.  led  me  into  inn 
yards  that  might  have  come  straight  from  the  Borough 
on  the  Surrey  side  of  the  Thames,  and  in  and  out  of  dark 
mysterious  courts  which  he  declared  as  "  good  "  as  the 
exploited  French  and  Italian  courts  every  etcher  has  at  one 
time  or  another  made  a  plate  of — curious  nooks  and  by- 
waj'^s  I  had  never  stopped  to  look  at  during  my  Third 
Street  days  and  would  have  seen  nothing  in  if  I  had. 

And  I  remember  going  with  him  along  Front  Street, 
where  I  should  have  thought  myself  contaminated  at  a 
time  when  it  might  have  varied  the  dull  round  of  my 
daily  walks,  so  unlike  was  it  to  the  spick  and  span  streets 
I  knew, — glimpses  at  every  crossing  of  the  Delaware, 
Philadelphia's  river  of  commerce  that  Philadelphians 
never  went  near  unless  to  take  the  boat  for  Torresdale  or, 
in  summers  of  economy,  the  steamer  for  Liverpool;  for 
several  blocks,  groups  of  seafaring  men  mending  sails  on 
the  side-walk,  JNIariners'  Boarding-Houses,  a  Mariners' 
Church,  and  Philadelphia  here  the  seaport  town  it  is  and 
always  has  been;  and  then,  successive  odours  of  the  barn- 


SlFiVN^^ 


vv-^y 


THE  OLD  COACHING-INN  YARD 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  281 

yard,  fish,  spice,  coffee,  Philadelphia  smelling  as  strong 
of  the  romance  of  trade  as  any  Eastern  bazaar. 

And  I  remember  J.  and  I  crossing  the  forbidden  line 
into  "  up  town  "  to  find  beauty,  interest,  picturesqueness 
in  "  Market,  Arch,  Race  and  Vine  " — old  houses  every- 
where, the  old  Meeting-House,  Betsy  Ross'  house.  Provost 
Smith's,  the  Christ  Church  Burial  Ground  at  Fifth  and 
Arch  where  Franklin  is  bin-ied,  narrow  rambling  alleys, 
red  and  black  brick,  and  there,  up  on  a  house  at  the  corner 
of  Front,  where  it  is  to  this  day,  a  sign  going  back  to  the 
years  when  Race  was  still  Sassafras  Street,  and  so  part  of 
the  original  scheme  of  Philadelphia,  to  which,  with  Phila- 
delphia docility,  I  had  all  my  life  believed  South  of  Market 
alone  could  claim  the  right. 

And  I  remember  our  wandering  to  the  Schuylkill,  not 
by  the  neat  and  well-kept  roads  and  paths  of  the  Park, 
but  where  tumbled-down  houses  faced  it  near  Callowhill 
Street  Bridge  and  works  of  one  kind  or  another  rose  from 
its  banks  near  Gray's  Ferry,  and  Philadelphia  was  a  town 
of  industry,  of  machines,  of  railroads  connecting  it  with  all 
parts  of  the  world, — for  already  to  J.  "  the  Wonder  of 
Work  "  had  made  its  irresistible  appeal.  And  I  remember 
our  wandering  farther,  north  and  south,  east  and  west — 
interest,  beauty,  picturesqueness  never  failing  us — in  the 
end  Philadelphia  transformed  into  a  vast  Wonderland, 
where  in  one  little  section  people  might  spend  their  lives 
dancing,  paying  calls  at  noon,  eating  chicken  salad  and 
croquettes  from  Augustine's,  but  where  in  every  other  they 


282  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

were  striving,  struggling,  toiling,  to  carry  on  Penn's  tradi- 
tions and  to  give  to  his  town  the  greatness,  power  and 
beauty  he  planned  for  it. 

In  these  walks  I  had  followed  J.  into  streets  and 
quarters  of  the  town  I  had  not  known.  But  I  would  be 
leaving  out  half  the  story  if  I  did  not  say  how  much  he 
showed  me  in  the  streets  and  quarters  I  did  know.  It  is 
with  a  town,  I  suppose,  as  with  life  out  of  which,  philoso- 
phers say,  we  get  just  as  much,  or  as  little,  as  we  bring  to 
it.  I  had  brought  no  curiosity,  no  interest,  no  sympathy, 
to  Philadelphia,  and  Philadelphia  therefore  had  given  me 
nothing  save  a  monotony  of  red  brick  and  green  shade. 
But  now  I  came  keen  with  curiosity,  full  of  interest,  aflame 
with  sympathy,  and  Philadelphia  overwhelmed  me  with  its 
gifts.  Oh,  the  difference  when,  having  eyes,  one  sees!  I 
was  as  surprised  to  learn  that  I  had  been  living  in  the  midst 
of  beauty  all  my  life  as  M.  Jourdain  was  to  find  he  had 
been  talking  prose. 

Down  in  lower  Spruce  and  all  the  neighbouring  streets, 
where  I  had  walked  in  loneliness  longing  for  something 
to  happen,  something  happened  at  every  step — beautiful 
Colonial  houses,  stately  doorways,  decorative  ironwork, 
dormer  windows,  great  gables  facing  each  other  at  street 
corners,  harmonious  proportions — not  merely  a  bit  here 
and  a  bit  there,  but  the  old  Colonial  town  almost  intact, 
preserved  by  Philadelphia  through  many  generations  only 
to  be  abandoned  now  to  the  Russian  Jew  and  the  squalor 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  283 

and  the  dirt  that  the  Russian  Jew  takes  with  him  wherever 
he  goes.  In  not  another  American  town  had  the  old  streets 
then  changed  so  httle  since  Colonial  days,  in  not  another 
were  they  so  well  worth  keeping  unchanged.  I  had  not  to 
dive  into  musty  archives  to  unearth  the  self-evident  fact 
that  the  early  Friends,  when  they  left  England,  packed 
up  with  their  liberty  of  conscience  the  love  of  beauty  in 
architecture  and,  what  was  more  practical,  the  money  to 
pay  for  it;  that,  in  a  fine  period  of  English  architecture, 
they  got  good  English  architects, — Wren  said  to  have  been 
of  the  number — to  design  not  merely  their  public  build- 
ings, but  their  private  houses ;  that,  their  Founder  setting 
the  example,  they  carried  over  in  their  personal  baggage 
panelling,  carvings,  ironwork,  red  and  black  brick,  furni- 
ture, and  the  various  details  they  were  not  likely  to  procure 
in  Philadelphia  until  Philadelphians  had  moved  from  their 
caves  and  the  primeval  forest  had  been  cut  down;  that 
when  Philadelphia  could  contribute  its  share  of  the  work, 
they  modified  the  design  to  suit  climate,  circumstances,  and 
material,  and  bequeathed  to  us  a  Philadelphia  with  so  much 
local  character  that  it  never  could  be  mistaken  for  an 
English  town. 

This  used  to  strike  the  intelligent  foreigner  as  long  as 
Philadelphia  was  content  to  have  a  character  of  its  own 
and  did  not  bother  to  be  in  architectural  or  any  other 
movements.  "  Not  a  distressingly  new-looking  city,  for 
the  Queen  Anne  style  in  vogue  when  its  prosperity  began 


284  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

is  in  the  main  adhered  to  with  Quaker-like  precision ;  good 
red  brick;  numerous  rather  narrow  windows  with  white 
outside  shutters,  a  block  cornice  along  the  top  of  the 
facades  and  the  added  American  feature  of  marble  steps 
and  entry,"— this,  in  a  letter  to  William  Michael  Rossetti, 
was  Mrs.  Gilchrist's  description  of  Philadelphia  in  the  late 
Eighteen- Seventies,  and  it  is  an  appreciative  description 
though  most  authorities  would  probably  describe  Philadel- 
phia as  Georgian  rather  than  Queen  Anne.  Philadelphia 
did  more  to  let  the  old  character  go  to  rack  and  ruin  during 
the  years  I  was  away  from  it  than  during  the  two  centuries 
before,  and  is  to-day  repenting  in  miles  upon  miles  of  sham 
Colonial.  But  repentance  cannot  wipe  away  the  traces 
of  sin — ^cannot  bring  back  the  old  Philadelphia  I  knew. 

I  do  not  want  to  attribute  too  much  to  my  new  and 
only  partially  developed  power  of  observing.  Had  the 
measuring  worm  not  retreated  before  the  sparrow,  I  might 
perhaps  have  been  less  prepared  during  my  walks  with  J. 
to  admit  the  beauty  of  the  trees  lining  every  street,  as  well 
as  of  the  houses  they  shaded.  But  what  is  the  use  of 
troubling  about  the  might-have-been?  The  important 
thing  is  that,  with  him  I  did  for  the  first  time  see  how 
beautiful  are  our  green,  well-shaded  streets.  With  him 
too  I  first  saw  how  beautiful  is  their  symmetry  as  they  run 
in  their  long  straight  lines  and  cross  each  other  at  right 
angles.  It  was  a  symmetry  I  had  confused  with  monotony, 
with  which  most  Philadelphians,  foolishly  misled,  still  con- 
fuse it.    They  would  rather,  for  the  sake  of  variety,  that 


.'^//'^-^s^  5.- 


?t^^J^ 


FRANKLIN'S  GRAVE 


I 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  287 

Penn  had  left  the  building  and  growth  of  Philadelphia  to 
chance  as  the  founders  of  other  American  towns  did — they 
would  rather  boast  with  New  York  or  Boston  of  the  dis- 
orderly picturesqueness  of  streets  that   follow  old  cow 
tracks  made  before  the  town  was.    But  Penn  understood 
the  value  of  order  in  architecture  as  in  conduct.     It  is 
true  that  Ruskin,  the  accepted  prophet  of  my  young  days, 
did  not  include  order  among  his  Seven  Lamps,  but  there 
was  a  good  deal  Ruskin  did  not  know  about  architecture, 
and  a  town  like  Paris  in  its  respect  for  arrangement — for 
order — for  a  thought-out  plan — will  teach  more  at  a  glance 
than  all  his  rhapsodies.     Philadelphia  has  not  the  noble 
perspectives  of  the  French  capital  nor  the  splendid  build- 
ings to  complete  them,  but  its  despised  regularity  gives  it 
the  repose,  the  serenity,  which  is  an  essential  of  great  art, 
whether  the  art  of  the  painter  or  the  engraver,  the  sculptor 
or  the  architect.     And  it  gives,  too,  a  suggestiveness,  a 
mystery  we  are  more  apt  to  seek  in  architectural  disorder 
and  caprice.     I  know  nobody  who  has  pointed  out  this 
beauty  in  Penn's  design  except  Mrs.  Gilchrist  in  the  de- 
scription from  which  I  have  already  borrowed,  and  she 
merely  hints  at  the  truth,  not  grasping  it.    Philadelphia  to 
her  was  more  picturesque  and  more  foreign-looking  than 
she  expected,  and  her  explanation  is  in  the  "  long  straight 
streets  at  right  angles  to  each  other,  long  enough  and 
broad  enough  to  present  that  always  pleasing  effect  of 
vista-converging  lines  that   stretch   out  indefinitely  and 
look  as  if  they  must  certainly  lead  somewhere  very  pleas- 


288  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

ant," — the  streets  that  are  to  the  town  what  *'  the  open 
road  "  is  to  the  country, — the  long,  white,  straight  road 
beckoning  who  can  say  where  ? 

Ill 

It  was  without  the  shghtest  intention  on  my  part  that 
the  vista-converging  hues  of  the  streets  led  me  direct  to 
William  Penn.  But  I  defy  anybody  to  do  a  little  thinking 
while  walking  through  the  streets  of  Philadelphia  and  not 
be  led  to  him,  so  for  eternity  has  he  stamped  them  with  his 
vivid  personality — not  William  Penn,  the  shadowy  prig 
of  the  school  history,  but  William  Penn,  the  man  with  a 
level  head,  big  ideas,  and  the  will  to  carry  them  out — three 
things  that  make  for  genius.  To  the  weakling  of  to-day 
the  fight  for  liberty  of  conscience  would  loom  up  so 
gigantic  a  task  as  to  fill  to  overflowing  his  little  span  here 
below.  But  in  the  fight  as  Penn  fought  it,  the  material 
details  could  be  overlooked  as  little  as  the  spiritual,  the 
comfort  of  the  bodies  of  his  people  no  more  neglected  than 
the  freedom  of  their  souls.  He  did  not  stop  to  preach 
about  town-planning  and  garden  cities,  and  improved 
housing  for  the  workman,  like  the  would-be  reformer  of  to- 
day. With  no  sentimental  pose  as  saviour  of  the  people, 
no  drivel  about  reforming  and  elevating  and  sweetening 
the  lives  of  humanity,  no  aspiration  towards  "  world- 
betterment,"  Penn  made  sure  that  Philadelphia  should  be 
the  green  town  he  thought  it  ought  to  be  and  that  men  and 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  289 

women,  whatever  their  appointed  task,  should  have  decent 
houses  to  hve  in.  He  had  the  common-sense  to  under- 
stand that  his  colonists  would  be  the  sturdier  and  the 
better  equipped  for  the  work  they  had  to  do  if  they 
lived  like  men  and  not  like  beasts,  and  that  a  town 
as  far  south  as  Philadelphia  called  for  many  gardens  and 
much  green  shade.  The  most  beautiful  architecture  is 
that  which  grows  logically  out  of  the  needs  of  the  people. 
That  is  why  Penn's  city  as  he  designed  it  was  and  is  a 
beautiful  city,  to  which  Efnglish  and  German  town  re- 
formers should  come  for  the  hints  Philadelphians  are  so 
misguided  as  to  seek  from  them. 

I  could  not  meet  Penn  in  his  pleasant  streets  and  miss 
the  succession  of  Friends  who  took  over  the  responsibility 
of  ensuring  life  and  reality  to  his  design,  not  allowing  it, 
like  Wren's  in  London,  to  lapse  into  a  half-forgotten 
archeeological  curiosity.  Personally,  I  knew  nothing  of 
the  Friends  and  envied  J.  who  did  because  he  was  one  of 
them,  as  I  never  could  be,  as  nobody,  not  born  to  it,  can. 
I  had  seen  them,  as  alas!  they  are  seen  no  longer:  quiet, 
dignified  men  in  broad-brimmed  hats,  sweet-faced  women 
in  delicate  greys  and  browns,  filling  our  streets  in  the 
spring  at  the  time  of  Yearly  Meeting.  Once  or  twice  I 
had  seen  them  at  home,  the  women  in  white  caps  and  fichus, 
quiet  and  composed,  sitting  peacefully  in  their  old-time 
parlours  simple  and  bare  but  filled  with  priceless  Sheraton 
or  Chippendale.    They  looked,  both  in  the  open  streets  and 

19 


k  1 


290  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

at  their  own  firesides,  so  placid,  so  detached  from  the 
world's  cares,  it  had  not  occurred  to  me  that  they  could 
be  the  makers  of  the  town's  beauty  and  the  sinews  of  its 
strength.  But  in  my  new  mood  I  could  nowhere  get  far 
from  them. 

Ghosts  of  the  early  Friends  haunted  the  old  streets 
and  the  old  houses  and,  mingling  witli  them,  were  ghosts 
of  the  World's  People  who  had  lost  no  time  in  coming  to 
share  their  town  and  ungraciously  abuse  the  privilege. 
The  air  was  thick  with  association.  J.  and  I  walked  in 
an  atmosphere  of  the  past,  delightfully  conscious  of  it  but 
never  troubling  to  reduce  it  to  dry  facts.  We  could  not 
have  been  as  young  as  we  were  and  not  scorn  any  approach 
to  pedantry,  not  as  lief  do  without  ghosts  as  to  grub  them 
up  out  of  the  Philadelphia  Library  or  the  Historical  So- 
ciety. We  left  it  to  the  antiquary  to  say  just  where  the  first 
Friends  landed  and  the  corner-stone  of  their  first  building 
was  laid,  just  in  which  Third  Street  house  Washington 
once  danced,  in  which  Front  Street  house  Bishop  White 
once  lived.  It  was  for  the  belated  Boswell,  not  for  us,  to 
follow  step  by  step  the  walks  abroad  of  Penn,  or  Franklin, 
or  any  of  our  town's  great  men.  It  was  no  more  necessary 
to  be  historians  in  order  to  feel  the  charm  of  the  past  than 
to  be  architects  in  order  to  feel  the  charm  of  the  houses, 
and  for  no  amount  of  exact  knowledge  would  we  have 
exchanged  the  romance  which  enveloped  us. 

Could  I  have  put  into  words  some  of  the  emotion  I 


ARCH  STREET  MEETING 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  293 

felt  in  gathering  together  my  material,  what  an  article 
I  would  have  made!  But  my  words  came  with  difficulty, 
and  indeed  I  have  never  had  the  "  ready  pen  "  of  the 
journalist,  always  I  have  been  shy  in  expressing  emotion 
of  any  kind.  No  reader  could  have  guessed  from  my 
article  my  enthusiasm  as  I  wrote  it.  But  at  least  it  did 
get  written  and  my  pleasure  in  it  was  not  disturbed  by 
doubt.  I  was  too  enthralled  by  what  I  had  to  say  to  realize 
that  I  had  not  managed  to  say  it  at  all. 

IV 

With  the  publication  of  the  article  our  task  was  at  an 
end,  but  not  our  walks  together.  J.  and  I  had  got  into  the 
habit  of  them,  it  was  a  pleasant  habit,  we  saw  no  reason 
to  give  it  up. 

Sometimes  we  walked  with  new  work  as  an  object. 
There  were  articles  about  Philadelphia  for  Our  Continent. 
We  called  it  work — learning  Romany — when  we  both 
walked  with  my  Uncle  up  Broad  Street  to  Oakdale  Park, 
and  through  Camden  and  beyond  to  the  Reservoir,  where 
the  Gypsies  camped,  and  made  Camden  in  my  eyes,  not 
the  refuge  of  all  in  doubt,  debt,  or  despair  as  its  traditions 
have  described  it,  but  a  rival  in  romance  of  Bagdad  or 
Samarcand.  When  we  walked  still  further,  taking  the 
train  to  help  us  out,  to  near  country  towns  for  the  autumn 
fairs,  never  missing  a  side  show,  we  called  this  the  search 
for  local  colour,  and  I  filled  note-books  with  notes.   Some- 


294  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

times  we  walked  for  no  more  practical  purpose  than 
pleasure  in  Philadelphia.  And  we  could  walk  for  days,  we 
could  walk  for  miles,  and  exhaust  neither  the  pleasure 
nor  the  town  that  I  once  fancied  I  knew  by  heart  if  I 
walked  from  ISIarket  to  Pine  and  from  the  Delaware  to 
the  Schuylkill. 

I  remember  as  a  remarkable  incident  my  discovery  of 
the  suburbs.  With  the  prejudice  borrowed  from  my 
Father,  I  had  cultivated  for  all  suburbs  something  of  the 
large  sweeping  contempt  which,  in  the  Eighteen-Nineties, 
Henley  and  the  National  Observer,  carrying  on  the  tradi- 
tion of  Thackeray,  made  it  the  fashion  to  profess  for  the 
suburbs  of  London.  West  Philadelphia  and  Germantown 
were  no  less  terms  of  opprobrium  in  my  mouth  than  Clap- 
ham  and  Brixton  in  Henley's.  But  Henley,  though  it  was 
a  mistake  to  insist  upon  Clapham  with  its  beautiful  Com- 
mon and  old  houses  and  dignified  air,  was  expressing  his 
splendid  scorn  of  the  second-rate,  the  provincial,  in  art  and 
in  letters.  I  was  only  expressing,  parrot-like,  a  pose  that 
did  not  belong  to  me,  but  to  my  Father  in  whose  outlook 
upon  life  and  things  there  was  a  whimsical  touch,  and  who 
carried  off'  his  prejudices  with  humour. 

I  was  the  more  foolish  in  this  because  few  towns,  if 
any,  have  lovelier  suburbs  than  Philadelphia.  Their  loveli- 
ness is  another  part  of  our  inheritance  from  William  Penn 
who  set  no  limits  to  his  dream  of  a  green  country  town,  and 
from  the  old  Friends  who,  in  deference  to  his  desire,  lined 
not  only  their  streets  but  their  roads  with  trees.     This  is 


CLIVEDEN,  THE  CHEW  HOUSE 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  297 

only  as  it  should  be,  I  thought  when,  reading  the  letters 
of  John  Adams,  I  came  upon  his  description  of  the  road 
to  Kensing-ton  and  beyond,  "  straight  as  the  streets  of 
Philadelphia,  on  each  side  .  .  .  beautiful  rows  of  trees, 
button-woods,  oaks,  walnuts,  cherries,  and  willows."  In 
our  time,  scarcely  a  road  out  of  Philadelphia  is  without 
the  same  beautiful  rows,  if  not  the  same  variety  in  the 
trees,  and  while  much  of  the  open  countrj'  it  ran  through 
in  John  Adams'  day  has  been  built  up  with  town  and 
suburban  houses,  the  trees  still  line  it  on  each  side.  Every- 
body knows  the  beauty  of  the  leafy  roads  of  the  Main 
Line,  quite  a  correct  thing  to  know,  the  Main  Line  being 
the  refuge  of  the  Philadelphian  pushed  out  of  "  Chestnut, 
Walnut,  Spruce  and  Pine  "  by  business  and  the  Russian 
Jew  combined.  But  the  JNIain  Line  has  not  the  monopoly 
of  suburban  beauty,  though  it  may  of  suburban  fashion. 
The  Main  Street  in  Germantown,  with  its  peaceful  old 
grey  stone  houses  and  great  overshadowing  trees,  has  no 
rival  at  home  or  abroad,  and  I  have  seen  as  commonplace  a 
street  as  Walnut  in  West  Philadelphia,  its  uninteresting 
houses  screened  behind  the  two  long  lines  of  trees,  become 
in  the  golden  light  of  a  summer  afternoon  as  stately  an 
avenue  as  any  at  Versailles  or  St.  Germain. 

Not  only  the  trees,  but  the  past  went  with  us  to 
Germantown.  Has  any  other  American  suburb  so  many 
old  houses  to  boast?  Stenton,  the  Chew  House,  the  John- 
son House,  the  INIorris  House,  the  Wistar  House,  Wyck — 
are  there  any  other  Colonial  houses  with  nobler  interiors, 


298  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

statelier  furniture,  sweeter  gardens?  I  recall  the  pillared 
hall  of  Chew  House,  the  finely  proportioned  entrance  and 
stairway  of  Stenton,  the  garden  of  Wyck  as  I  last  saw  it — 
rather  overgrown,  heavy  with  the  perfume  of  roses  and 
syringa,  the  June  sun  low  behind  the  tall  trees  that  stand 
close  to  the  wall  along  Walnut  Lane ; — I  recall  the  memo- 
ries clustering  about  those  old  histdi-ic  homes,  about  every 
lane  and  road  and  path,  and  I  wonder  that  Germantown 
is  not  one  of  the  show  places  of  the  world.  But  the 
foreigner,  to  whom  Philadelphia  is  a  station  between  New 
York  and  Washington  or  New  York  and  Chicago,  has 
never  heard  of  it,  nor  has  the  rest  of  America  to  whom 
Philadelphia  is  the  junction  for  Atlantic  City.  With  the 
exception  of  Stenton,  the  old  Germantown  houses  are  for 
use,  not  for  show,  still  lived  in  by  the  families  who  have 
lived  in  them  from  the  beginning,  and  I  love  them  too  well 
to  want  to  see  them  overtaken  by  the  fate  of  sights  starred 
in  Baedeker,  even  while  I  wonder  why  they  have  escaped. 
At  times  J.  and  I  walked  in  the  green  valley  of  the 
Wissahickon,  along  the  well-kept  road  past  the  old  white 
taverns,  with  wide  galleries  and  suppers  of  cat-fish  and 
waffles,  which  had  not  lost  their  pleasant  primitiveness  to 
pass  themselves  off  as  rural  Rumpelmeyers  where  ladies 
stop  for  afternoon  tea.  Can  the  spring  be  fairer  any- 
where than  in  and  around  Philadelphia  when  wistaria 
blossoms  on  every  wall  and  the  country  is  white  with  dog- 
wood ?  Often  w^e  wandered  in  the  Wissahickon  woods,  by 
narrow  footpaths  up  the  low  hillsides,  so  often  that,  wher- 


OUT  IN  FAIEMOUNT  PARK 


I 


I 


(irk  and  i 
iantic  i 


VWAI  ,t>l70MJ^.'5  '/a  TOO 


Mi.>  If  A 


;  ie:i    w. 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  299 

ever  I  may  be,  certain  effects  of  brilliant  sunshine  filtering 
through  the  pale  green  of  early  spring  foliage  will  send  me 
straight  back  to  the  Wissahickon  and  to  the  days  when  I 
could  not  walk  in  Philadelphia  or  its  suburbs  and  not 
strike  gold  at  every  step.  And  the  Wissahickon  was  but 
one  small  section  of  the  Park,  of  which  the  corrupt  govern- 
ment Philadelphia  loves  to  rail  at  made  the  largest  and 
fairest,  at  once  the  wildest  and  most  wisely  laid-out  play- 
ground, in  America.  Will  a  reform  Government,  with 
all  its  boasting,  do  as  much  for  Philadelphia?  I  had 
skimmed  the  surface  only  on  those  boating  parties  up  the 
river  and  those  walking  parties  in  the  starlit  or  moonlit 
shade.  Wide  undiscovered  stretches  lay  off  the  beaten 
track,  and  the  mansions  of  the  Park — Strawberry,  Bel- 
mont, Mount  Pleasant — were  well  stocked,  not  only  with 
lemonade  and  cake  and  peanuts,  with  croquettes  and 
chicken  salad,  but  with  beauty  and  associations  for  those 
who  knew  how  to  give  the  order.  And,  greater  marvel, 
beauty — classic  beauty — was  to  be  had  even  in  the  Fair- 
mount  Water  Works  that,  after  I  left  school,  I  had  looked 
down  upon  as  a  childish  entertainment  provided  for  the 
holidays,  beneath  the  consideration  of  my  maturer  years. 

V 

Of  all  our  walks,  none  was  better  than  the  walk  to 
Bartram's  on  the  banks  of  the  Schuylkill  beyond  Gray's 
Ferry.  It  seemed  very  far  then,  before  the  trolley  passed 
by  its  gate,  and  before  the  rows  of  little  two-story  houses 


300  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

had  begun  to  extend  towards  it  like  the  greedy  tentacles 
of  the  great  town.  The  City  Government  had  not  taken  it 
over,  it  was  not  so  well  looked  after.  The  old  grey  stone 
house,  with  the  stone  tablet  on  its  walls  bearing  witness 
that  his  Lord  was  adored  by  John  Bartram,  had  not  yet 
been  turned  into  a  museum.  I  am  not  sure  whether  the 
trees  around  it — the  trees  collected  from  far  and  near — 
were  learnedly  labelled  as  they  are  now.  The  garden  had 
grown  wild,  the  thicket  below  was  a  wilderness.  It  is  right 
that  the  place  should  be  cared  for.  The  city  could  not 
aiFord  to  lose  the  beauty  one  of  its  most  famous  citizens, 
who  was  one  of  the  most  famous  botanists  of  his  day, 
built  up,  and  his  family  preserved,  for  it,  and  when  I 
returned  I  welcomed  the  sign  this  new  care  gave  of  Phila- 
delphia's interest,  so  long  in  the  awakening.  But  Bar- 
tram's  was  more  beautiful  in  its  neglect,  as  an  old  church 
is  more  beautiful  before  the  restorer  pulls  down  the  ivy 
and  scrapes  and  polishes  the  stone.  Many  were  the  Sun- 
day afternoons  J.  and  I  spent  there,  and  many  the  hours 
we  sat  talking  on  the  little  bench  at  the  lower  end  of  the 
wilderness,  where  we  looked  out  on  the  river  and  planned 
new  articles. 

When  our  walks  together  had  become  too  strong  a 
habit  to  be  broken  and  we  decided  to  make  the  habit  one 
for  life,  we  went  back  again  and  again  to  Bartram's  and 
on  that  same  little  bench,  looking  out  upon  the  river,  we 
planned  work  for  the  long  years  we  hoped  were  ahead  of 


BARTRAMS 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  WORK  303 

us :  perhaps  seeing  the  future  in  the  more  glowing  colours 
for  the  contrast  with  the  past  about  us,  the  ashes  of  the 
life  and  beauty  from  which  our  phoenix  was  to  soar.  The 
work  then  planned  carried  and  kept  us  thousands  of  miles 
away,  but  it  belongs  none  the  less  to  the  old  scenes,  where 
it  was  inspired,  and  I  like  to  think  that,  though  the  chances 
of  this  work  have  made  us  exiles  for  years,  the  memory  of 
our  life  as  we  have  lived  it  is  inseparable  from  the  memory 
of  Bartram's  or,  indeed,  of  Philadelphia  which,  through 
work,  I  learned  to  see  and  to  love. 


CHAPTER  XII :  PHILADELPHIA 
AND  LITERATURE 


ON  the  principle  that  nothing  interests  a  man — or  a 
M'oman — so  much  as  shop,  I  had  no  sooner 
begun  to  write  than  I  saw  Philadelphia  divided 
not  between  the  people  who  could  and  could  not  go  to  the 
Assembly  and  the  Dancing  Class,  but  between  the  people 
who  could  and  could  not  write ;  and,  after  I  began  to  write 
for  illustration,  between  the  people  who  could  and  could 
not  paint  and  draw.  It  had  never  before  occurred  to  me 
to  look  for  art  and  literature  in  Philadelphia. 

At  that  time,  you  had,  literally,  to  look  for  the  litera- 
ture to  find  it.  Philadelphia,  with  its  usual  reticence  and 
conscientiousness  in  preventing  any  Philadelphian  from 
becoming  a  prophet  in  Philadelphia,  had  hidden  its  liter- 
ary, with  its  innumerable  other,  lights  under  a  bushel, 
content  itself  to  know  they  were  there,  if  nobody  else  did. 
As  towns,  like  men,  are  apt  to  be  accepted  at  their  own 
valuation,  most  Americans  would  then  have  thought  it 
about  as  useful  to  look  for  snakes  in  Ireland  as  for  litera- 
ture in  Philadelphia.  I  am  not  sure  that  the  Philadelphian 
did  not  agree  with  them.  Recently,  I  have  heard  him,  in 
his  new  zeal  for  Philadelphia,  talk  as  if  it  were  the  biggest 
literary  thing  on  -earth,  the  headquarters  of  letters  in  the 

304 


\\ 


CARPENTER'S  HALL  INTERIOR 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       307 

United  States,  a  boast  which  I  am  told  Indianapolis  also 
makes  and,  as  far  as  I  am  concerned,  can  keep  on  making 
undisputed,  for  I  do  not  believe  in  measuring  literature 
like  so  much  sheet  iron  or  calico.  But  no  matter  what  we 
have  come  to  in  Philadelphia,  in  the  old  days  the  Philadel- 
phian  seldom  gave  his  lions  a  chance  to  roar  at  home  or 
paid  the  least  attention  to  them  if  they  tried  to.  I  rather 
think  he  would  have  affected  to  share  the  Western  Con- 
gressman's opinion  of  "  them  literary  fellers  "  when  the 
literary  fellers  came  from  his  native  town. 

But  the  Philadelphian  must  have  done  a  great  deal  of 
reading  to  judge  by  the  number  of  public  libraries  in  the 
town, — the  Philadelphia  Library,  the  Ridgway,  the  Mer- 
cantile, the  Free  Public  Library,  the  University  Library, 
the  Bryn  Mawr  College  Library,  the  Friends'  German- 
town  Library,  the  Library  of  the  Historical  Society,  and 
no  doubt  dozens  I  know  nothing  about — and  there  were 
always  collectors  from  the  days  of  Logan  and  Dr.  Rush 
to  those  of  JNIr.  Widener,  George  C.  Thomas  and  Governor 
Pennypacker.  But  the  Philadelphia  reading  man  never 
talked  books  and  the  Philadelphia  collector  never  vaunted 
and  advertised  his  treasures,  as  he  does  now  that  collecting 
is  correct.  The  average  man  kept  his  books  out  of  sight.  I 
remember  few  in  my  Grandfather's  house,  and  not  a  book- 
case from  top  to  bottom — few  in  any  other  house  except 
my  Father's.  But  I  know  that  many  people  had  books  and 
a  library  set  apart  to  read  them  in,  and  I  have  been  as- 
tonished since  to  see  the  large  collections  in  houses  where 


308  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

of  old  I  had  never  noticed  or  suspected  their  presence.  The 
Philadelphian  was  as  reticent  about  his  books  and  his 
pleasure  in  them  as  about  everything  else,  with  the  result 
that  he  got  the  credit  for  neither,  even  at  home.  This  had 
probably  something  to  do  with  the  fact  that  though,  as  far 
back  as  I  can  remember,  I  had  had  a  fancy  for  books  and 
for  reading,  I  grew  up  with  the  idea  that  for  literature,  as 
for  beauty,  the  Atlantic  had  to  be  crossed,  that  it  was  not  in 
the  nature  of  things  for  Philadelphia  to  have  had  a  literary 
past,  to  claim  a  literary  present,  or  to  hope  for  a  literary 
future.  But  as  I  had  discovered  my  mistake  about  the 
beauty  during  those  walks  with  J.,  so  in  my  modest  stall  in 
the  literary  shop,  I  learned  how  far  out  I  had  been  about 
the  literature.  It  was  the  same  story  over  again.  I  had 
only  to  get  interested,  and  there  was  everything  in  the 
world  to  interest  me. 

II 

There  was  the  past,  for  Philadelphia  had  had  a  literary 
past,  and  not  at  all  an  empty  past,  but  one  full  of  the  ro- 
mance of  effort  and  pride  of  achievement.  Because  Phila- 
delphians  did  not  begin  to  write  the  minute  they  landed 
on  the  banks  of  the  Delaware,  some  wise  people  argue  that 
Friends  were  then,  as  now,  unliterary.  But  what  of  Wil- 
liam Penn,  whose  writings  have  become  classics?  What 
of  Thomas  Elwood,  the  friend  of  Milton?  What  of 
George  Fox  who,  if  unlettered,  was  a  born  writer  no  less 
than  Bunyan?    Friends  did  not  write  and  publish  books 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       309 

right  off  in  Philadelphia  for  the  same  excellent  reason  that 
other  Colonists  did  not  in  other  Colonial  towns.  Living 
was  an  absorbing  business  that  left  them  no  time  for  writ- 
ing, and  printing  presses  and  publishers'  offices  and  book 
stores  did  not  strike  them  as  immediate  necessities  in  the 
wilderness.  It  was  not  out  of  consideration  that  the  early 
Philadelphia  Friends  bequeathed  nothing  to  the  now  sadly 
overladen  shelves  of  the  British  Museum  and  the  Library 
of  Congress. 

When  leisure  came  Philadelphians  were  readier  to 
devote  it  to  science.  According  to  Mr.  Sydney  Fisher, 
Pennsylvania  has  done  more  for  science  than  any  other 
State:  a  subject  upon  which  my  profound  ignorance  bids 
me  be  silent.  But  science  did  not  keep  them  altogether 
from  letters.  No  people  ever  had  a  greater  itch  for  writing. 
Look  at  the  length  of  their  correspondence,  the  minute- 
ness of  their  diaries.  And  they  broke  into  poetry  on  the 
slightest  provocation.  Authorities  say  that  no  real  poem 
appeared  in  America  before  1800,  but  the  blame  lies  not 
alone  with  Philadelphia.  It  did  what  it  could.  Boston 
may  boast  of  Anne  Bradstreet  who  was  rhyming  before 
most  New  Englanders  had  time  for  reading,  but  so  could 
Philadelphia  brag  of  Deborah  Logan — if  Philadelphia 
ever  bragged  of  anything  Philadelphian — and  I  am  will- 
ing to  believe  there  is  no  great  difference  between  the  two 
poetesses  without  labouring  through  their  verses  to  prove 
myself  wrong.  And  the  Philadelphian  was  as  prolific  as 
any  other  Colonial  in  horrible  doggerel  to  his  mistress's 


310  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

hoops  and  bows,  to  her  tears  and  canary  birds.  And  as 
far  as  I  know,  only  a  Philadelphian  among  Colonial  poets 
is  immortalized  in  the  Dunciad,  though  possibly  Ralph, 
Franklin's  friend  to  whom  the  honour  fell,  would  rather 
have  been  forgotten  than  remembered  solely  because  his 
howls  to  Cynthia  made  night  hideous  for  Pope.  And 
where  else  did  the  young  men  so  soon^form  themselves  into 
little  groups  to  discourse  seriously  upon  literature  and 
kindred  matters,  as  they  walked  sedately  in  the  woods 
along  the  Schuylkill?  Where  else  was  there  so  soon  a 
society — a  junto — devoted  to  learning? 

In  innumerable  ways  I  could  see,  once  I  could  see 
anything,  how  Philadelphia  was  preparing  itself  all  along 
for  literaiy  pursuits  and  accomplishment.  Let  me  brag  a 
little,  if  Philadelphia  won't.  Wasn't  it  in  Germantown 
that  the  first  paper  mill  of  the  Colonies  was  set  up  ?  Wasn't 
it  there  that  the  New  Testament  was  printed  in  German 
— and  went  into  seven  editions — before  any  other  Colony 
had  the  enterprise  to  print  it  in  English,  so  that  Saur's 
Testament  is  now  a  treasure  for  the  collector?  Isn't  it 
maintained  by  some  authorities,  if  others  dispute  it,  that 
the  first  Bible  in  English  was  published  in  Philadelphia  by 
Robert  Aitken,  at  "  Pope's  Head  above  the  Coffee  House, 
in  Market  Street  "  ?  And  Philadelphia  issued  the  first 
American  daily  paper,  the  most  important  of  the  first 
American  reviews,  the  most  memorable  Almanac  of 
Colonial  days — can  any  other  compete  with  Poor  Rich- 
ard's?    And  Philadelphia   opened   the   first   Circulating 


MAIN  STREET,  GERMANTOWN 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       313 

Library — the  Philadelphia  Library  is  no  benevolent  up- 
start of  to-day.  And  Philadelphia  publishers  were  for 
years  the  most  go-ahead  and  responsible — who  did  not 
know  the  names  of  Gary,  Lea,  Blanehard,  Griggs, 
Lippincott,  knew  nothing  of  the  publishing  trade.  And 
Philadelphia  book  stores,  with  Lippineott's  leading, 
were  the  best  patronized.  And  Philadelphia  had  the 
monopoly  of  the  English  book  trade,  with  Thomas  Wardle 
to  direct  it.  And  Philadelphia  held  its  own  views  on  copy- 
right and  stuck  to  them  in  the  face  of  opposition  for 
years — whether  right  or  wrong  does  not  matter,  the  thing 
is  that  it  cared  enough  to  have  views.  There  is  a  record 
for  you!  Why  the  literary  man  had  only  to  appear,  and 
Philadelphia  was  all  swept  and  garnished  for  his  comfort 
and  convenience. 

And  the  literary  man  did  appear,  with  amazing 
promptness  under  the  circumstances.  When  the  demand 
was  for  political  writers,  Philadelphia  supplied  Franklin, 
Dickinson,  and  a  whole  host  of  others,  until  it  is  all  the 
Historical  Society  of  Pensylvania  can  do  to  cope  with 
their  pamphlets.  When  the  demand  was  for  native  fiction, 
Philadelphia  produced  the  first  American  novelist,  Charles 
Brockden  Brown,  and  if  Philadelphians  do  not  read  him 
in  our  day,  Shelley  did  in  his,  which  ought  to  be  as  much 
fame  as  any  pioneer  could  ask  for.  When  the  need  was  for 
an  American  Cookery  Book,  Philadelphia  presented  Miss 
Leslie  to  the  public  who  received  her  with  such  apprecia- 
tion that,  in  the  First  Edition,  she  is  harder  to  find  than 


314  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Mrs.  Glasse.  When,  with  the  years,  the  past  rose  in 
value,  Philadelphia  gave  to  America  an  antiquary,  and 
John  Watson,  with  his  Annals,  set  a  fashion  in  Philadel- 
phia that  had  to  wait  a  good  half  century  for  followers. 
And  when  the  writer  was  multiplied  all  over  the  country 
and  the  reader  with  him,  Philadelphia  provided  the  periodi- 
cal, the  annual,  the  parlour-table  book,  that  the  one  wrote 
for  and  the  other  subscribed  to — an  endless  succession  of 
them :  The  Casket,  The  Gift,  The  Souvenir,  which  I  have 
no  desire  to  disturb  on  their  obscure  shelves ;  the  Philadel- 
phia Saturday  Museum,  and  Burtons  Gentleman s  Maga- 
zine, to  me  the  emptiest  of  empty  names ;  Sartain's  Union 
Magazine,  which  I  might  as  well  be  honest  and  say  I  have 
never  seen;  Graham's,  in  its  prime,  unrivalled,  unap- 
proached;  Godey's  Lady's  Book,  offering  its  pages  alike 
to  the  newest  verse  and  the  latest  mode,  the  popular  maga- 
zine that  every  American  saw  at  his  dentist's  or  his  doc- 
tor's, edited  by  Mrs.  Sarah  Josepha  Hale,  for  a  woman, 
then  as  always,  could  get  where  she  chose,  if  she  had  the 
mind  to,  without  the  help  of  arson  and  suicide ;  Peterson's, 
which  I  recall  only  in  its  title ;  Lippincott's,  in  my  time  the 
literary  test  or  standard  in  Philadelphia  and  scrupulously 
taken  in  by  the  Philadelphia  householder.  I  can  see  it 
still,  lying  soberly  on  the  centre  table  in  the  back  parlour 
of  the  Eleventh  and  Spruce  Street  house,  never  defaced 
or  thumbed,  I  fancy  seldom  opened,  but  like  everything 
in  the  house,  like  my  Grandfather  himself,  a  type,  a  symbol 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       315 

of  Philadelphia  respectability.  It  was  as  much  an  obliga- 
tion for  the  respectable  Philadelphia  citizen  to  subscribe 
to  Lippincott's  as  to  belong  to  the  Historical  Society,  to 
be  a  member  of  the  Philadelphia  Library,  to  buy  books 
for  Christmas  presents  at  Lippincott's  or  Porter  and 
Coates'.  The  Philadelphian,  who  had  no  particular  use 
for  a  book  as  a  book  or,  if  he  had,  kept  the  fact  to  himself, 
was  content  to  parade  it  as  an  ornament,  and  no  par- 
lour was  without  its  assortment  of  pretty  and  expensive 
parlour-table  books,  received  as  Christmas  presents,  and 
as  purely  ornamental  as  the  pictures  on  the  wall  and  the 
vases  on  the  mantelpiece.  I  know  one  Philadelphian  who 
carried  this  decorative  use  of  books  still  further  and  nailed 
them  to  the  ceiling  to  explain  that  the  room  they  decorated 
was  a  library,  which  nobody  would  have  suspected  for  a 
moment,  as  they  were  the  only  volumes  in  it. 

For  the  man  who  had  a  living  to  make  out  of  literature, 
Philadelphia  was  a  good  place,  not  to  come  away  from, 
but  to  go  to,  and  a  Jiumber  of  American  men  of  letters 
did  go,  though  I  need  hardly  add  Philadelphia  made  as 
little  of  the  fact  as  possible.  In  Philadelphia  Washington 
Irving,  sometimes  called  America's  first  literary  man,  pub- 
lished his  books,  but  truth  compels  me  to  admit  that  he 
fared  better  when  he  handed  them  over  to  Putnam  in  New 
York;  though  of  late  years,  the  Lippincotts  have  done 
much  to  atone  for  the  old  failure  by  their  successful  issues 
of  The  Alhambfa  and  The  Traveller.     To  Philadelphia 


316  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

magazines,  N.  P.  Willis,  and  there  was  no  more  popular 
American  writer,  pledged  himself  for  months  ahead.  To 
Philadelphia,  Lowell  came  from  Boston  to  get  work. 
Poe  deserted  Richmond  and  the  South  for  Philadelphia, 
where  he  contributed  to  Philadelphia  magazines,  edited 
them,  planned  new  ones,  while  Philadelphia  waited  until 
he  was  well  out  of  the  world  to  know  that  he  ever  had  lived 
there.  Altogether,  when  I  came  upon  the  scene,  Phila- 
delphia had  had  a  highly  creditable  literary  past,  and  was 
having  a  highly  creditable  literary  present,  and,  in  pursu- 
ance of  its  invariable  policy,  was  making  no  fuss  about  it. 

Ill 

As  I  look  back,  the  three  most  conspicuous  figures  of 
this  literary  present  were  Charles  Godfrey  Leland,  George 
Boker  and  Walt  Whitman.  All  three  were  past  middle 
age,  they  had  done  most  of  their  important  work,  they  had 
gained  an  international  reputation.  But  that  of  course 
made  no  difference  to  Philadelphia.  I  doubt  if  it  had 
heard  of  George  Boker  as  a  man  of  letters,  though  it  knew 
him  politically  and  also  socially,  as  he  had  not  lost  his 
interest  in  society  and  the  Philadelphia  Club.  My  Uncle, 
having  no  use  for  society  in  Philadelphia  and  saying  so 
with  his  accustomed  vigour,  and  not  having  busied  himself 
with  politics  for  many  years,  was  ignored  unreservedly. 
Walt  Whitman,  who  probably  would  not  have  been  con- 
sidered eligible  for  the  Assembly  and  the  Dancing  Class 


// — ^ 


'^ 


'*^>"^'  '^ttt 


ARCH  STREET  MEETING— INTERIOR 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       319 

had  he  condescended  to  know  of  their  existence,  did  not 
exist  socially,  and  it  is  a  question  if  he  would  have  collected 
round  him  his  ardent  worshippers  from  Philadelphia  had 
he  not  had  the  advantage  of  having  been  born  somewhere 
else.  If  I  am  not  mistaken,  this  worship  had  not  begim 
in  my  time,  when  he  was  more  apt  to  receive  a  visitor  from 
London  or  Boston  than  from  Philadelphia. 

The  fact  that  it  was  my  good  fortune  to  know  these 
three  men  contributed  considerably  to  my  new  and  pleas- 
ant feeling  of  self-importance.  When  I  wrote  the  life  of 
my  Uncle  a  few  years  ago,  I  had  much  to  say  of  him  and 
my  relations  with  him  at  this  period,  and  I  do  not  want  to 
repeat  myself.  But  I  can  no  more  leave  him  out  of  my 
recollections  of  literary  Philadelphia  than  out  of  my  per- 
sonal reminiscences.  When  he  entered  so  intimately  into 
my  life  he  was  nearer  sixty  than  fifty,  but  he  had  lost  noth- 
ing of  his  vigour  nor  of  his  physical  beauty — tall,  large, 
long-bearded,  a  fine  profile,  the  eyes  of  the  seer.  He  was 
fastidious  in  dress,  with  a  leaning  to  light  greys  and 
browns,  and  a  weakness  for  canes  which  he  preferred  thin 
and  elegant.  I  remember  his  favourite  was  black  and  had 
an  altogether  unfashionable  silver,  ruby-eyed  dragon  for 
handle.  On  occasions  to  which  it  was  appropriate,  he  wore 
a  silk  hat;  on  others,  more  informal,  he  exchanged  it  for 
a  large  soft  felt — a  modified  cowboy  hat — which  suited  him 
better,  though  he  would  not  have  forgiven  me  had  I  had 
the  courage  to  say  so  to  his  face,  his  respect  for  the  con- 


320  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

ventions,  always  great,  having  been  intensified  during  his 
long  residence  in  England.  It  seems  superfluous  to  add 
that  he  could  not  pass  unnoticed  in  Philadelphia  streets, 
which  did  not  run  to  cowboy  hats  or  dragon-handled  canes 
or  any  deviations  from  the  approved  Philadelphia  dress. 
Nor  did  his  fancy  for  peering  into  shop  windows  make  him 
less  conspicuous,  and  as  his  daily  \talk  was  hardly  com- 
plete if  it  did  not  lead  to  his  buying  something  in  the  shop, 
were  it  only  a  five-cent  bit  of  modern  blue-and-white 
Japanese  china,  this  meant  that  before  his  purchase  was 
handed  over  to  me,  as  it  usually  was,  his  pleasure  being 
not  in  the  possession  but  in  the  buying,  he  had  parcels  to 
carry,  a  shocking  breach  of  good  manners  in  Philadelphia. 
In  his  company  therefore  I  became  a  conspicuous  figure 
myself,  and  I  was  often  his  companion  in  the  streets;  but 
to  this  I  had  no  objection,  having  been  inconspicuous  far 
too  long  for  my  taste. 

He  had  written  his  Breitmann  Ballads  years  before 
when  the  verse  of  no  other  American  of  note — unless  it 
was  Longfellow's  and  Whittier's  and  Lowell's  in  the  Big- 
low  Papers — had  had  so  wide  a  circulation.  He  had  also 
published  one  or  two  of  his  Gypsy  books,  never  surpassed 
except  by  Borrow.  And  he  was  engaged  in  endless  new 
tasks — more  Gypsy  papers.  Art  in  the  Schools,  Indian 
Legends,  Comic  Ballads,  Essays  on  Education,  and  I  did 
not  mind  what  since  my  excitement  was  in  being  admitted 
for  the  first  time  into  the  companionship  of  a  man  who  de- 


.*! 


-■=»     'ill  ^ 


V- "  > 


>'/-'■. 


<<^<, 


FRONT  AND  CALLOWHILL 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       323 

voted  himself  to  writing,  to  whom  writing  was  business, 
who  sat  down  at  his  desk  after  breakfast  and  wrote  as  my 
Father  after  breakfast  went  down  to  his  office  and  bought 
and  sold  stocks,  who  never  stopped  except  for  his  daily 
walk,  who  got  back  to  work  if  there  was  a  free  hour  before 
dinner  and  who,  after  dinner,  read  until  he  went  to  bed. 
INIoreover,  he  had  brought  with  him  the  aroma,  as  it  were, 
of  the  literary  life  in  London.  He  had  met  many  of  the 
people  who,  because  they  had  written  books,  were  my 
heroes.  Here  would  have  been  literature  enough  to  trans- 
figure Philadelphia  had  I  known  no  other  writers. 

IV 

But,  through  him,  I  did  know  others.  First  of  all, 
George  Boker  with  whom,  however,  I  could  not  pretend 
to  friendship  or  more  than  the  barest  acquaintance.  In 
the  streets  he  was  as  noticeable  a  figure  as  my  Uncle, 
though  given  neither  to  cowboy  hats  and  dragon-handled 
canes  nor  to  peering  into  shop  windows  and  carrying 
parcels.  Like  my  Uncle,  he  was  taller  than  the  average 
man,  and  handsomer,  his  white  hair  and  white  military 
moustache  giving  him  a  more  distinguished  air,  I  fancy,  in 
his  old  age  than  was  his  in  his  youth.  His  smile  was  of  the 
kindliest,  the  characteristic  I  remember  best.  He  had  re- 
turned from  his  appointments  as  Minister  to  Russia  and 
Turkey  and  had  given  up  active  political  and  diplomatic 
life.    He  had  written  most  of  his  poems,  if  not  all,  includ- 


324  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

ing  the  Francesca  da  Rimini  which  Lawrence  Barrett  was 
shortly  afterwards  to  put  on  the  stage,  and  he  impressed 
me  as  a  man  who  had  had  his  fill  of  life  and  work  and 
adventure  and  was  content  to  settle  down  to  the  comforts 
of  Philadelphia,  He  and  my  Uncle,  who  had  been  friends 
from  boyhood  or  babyhood,  spent  every  Sunday  afternoon 
together.  JMy  L^ncle  had  large  spacious  rooms  on  the 
ground  floor  of  a  house  in  South  Broad  Street  where  the 
Philadelphia  Art  Club  now  is,  and  there  George  Boker 
came  Sunday  after  Sunday  and  there,  if  I  dropped  in,  I 
saw  him.  I  had  the  discretion  never  to  stay  long,  for  I 
realized  that  their  intimate  free  talk  was  valued  too  much 
by  both  for  them  to  care  to  have  it  interrupted.  I  can 
remember  nothing  he  ever  said — I  have  an  idea  he  was  a 
man  who  did  not  talk  a  great  deal,  while  my  Uncle  did; 
my  memory  is  of  his  kindly  smile  and  my  sense  that  here 
was  one  of  the  literary  friendships  I  had  read  of  in  books. 
So,  I  thought,  might  Dr.  Johnson  and  Goldsmith  have 
met  and  talked,  or  Lamb  and  Coleridge,  and  Broad  Street 
seemed  tinged  with  the  romance  that  I  took  for  granted 
coloured  the  Temple  in  London  and  Gough  Square. 

V 

Through  my  Uncle  I  also  met  Walt  Whitman,  and  he 
impressed  me  still  more  with  the  romance  of  literature. 
He  was  so  unexpected  in  Philadelphia,  for  which  I  claim 
him  in  his  last  years,  Camden  being  little  more  than  a 
suburb,   whatever   Camden    itself   may   think.      I    could 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       325 

almost  have  imagined  that  it  was  for  the  humour  of  the 
thing  he  came  to  settle  where  his  very  appearance  was  an 
offence  to  the  proprieties.  George  Boker  was  scrupu- 
lously correct.  My  Uncle's  hat  and  dragon-handled  cane 
only  seemed  to  emphasize  his  inborn  Philadelphia  shrink- 
ing from  eccentricity.  But  Walt  Whitman,  from  top  to 
toe,  proclaimed  the  man  who  did  not  bother  to  think  of  the 
conventions,  nnich  less  respect  them.  You  saw  it  in  his 
long  white  hair  and  long  white  beard,  in  his  loose  light 
grey  clothes,  in  the  soft  white  shirt  unlaundered  and  open 
at  the  neck,  in  the  tall,  formless  grey  hat  like  no  hat  ever 
worn  in  Philadelphia.  To  have  been  stopped  by  him  on 
Chestnut  Street — a  street  he  loved — would  have  filled  me 
with  confusion  and  shame  in  the  days  before  literature  had 
become  my  shop.  But  once  literature  blocked  my  horizon, 
to  be  stopped  by  him  lifted  me  up  to  the  seventh  heaven. 
If  people  turned  to  look,  and  Philadelphians  never  grew 
quite  accustomed  to  his  presence,  my  pleasure  was  the 
greater.  I  took  it  for  a  visible  sign  that  I  was  known, 
recognized,  and  accepted  in  the  literary  world.  And  what 
a  triumph  in  streets  where,  of  old,  life  had  appalled  me  by 
its  emptiness  of  incident! 

In  one  way  or  another  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  Walt 
Whitman,  but  most  frequently  by  the  chance  which  in- 
creased the  picturesqueness  of  the  meeting.  I  called  on 
him  in  the  Camden  house  described  many  times  by  many 
people:  in  my  memory,  a  little  house,  the  room  where  I 
was  received  simple  and  bare,  the  one  ornament  as  un- 


326  OLR  PHILADELPHIA 

expected  there  as  Walt  Whitman  himself  in  Philadelphia, 
for  it  was  an  old  portrait,  dark  and  dingy,  of  an  ancestor ; 
and  I  wondered  if  an  ancestor  so  ancient  as  to  grow  dark 
and  dingy  in  a  frame  did  not  make  it  easier  to  play  the 
democrat  and  call  every  man  comrade — ^or  Camerado,  I 
should  say,  as  Walt  Whitman  said,  with  his  curious  fond- 
ness for  foreign  words  and  sounds.  But  though  I  saw  him 
at  home,  he  is  more  associated  in  my  memory  with  the  ferry- 
boat for  Camden  when  my  Uncle  and  I  were  on  our 
way  to  the  Gypsy's  camping  place  near  the  reservoir; 
and  with  the  corner  of  Front  and  Market  and  the  boot- 
black's big  chair  by  the  Italian's  candy  and  fruit  stand 
where  he  loved  to  sit,  and  where  I  loved  to  see  him, 
though,  Philadelphian  at  heart,  I  trembled  for  his  audac- 
ity; and  with  the  Market  Street  horse-car,  where  he  was 
already  settled  in  his  corner  before  it  started  and  where 
the  driver  and  the  conductor,  passing  through,  nodded  to 
him  and  called  him  "  Walt,"  and  where  he  was  as  happy 
as  the  modern  poet  in  his  sixty-horse-power  car.  He  was 
happiest  when  sitting  out  in  front  with  the  driver,  and  I 
have  rarely  been  as  proud  as  the  afternoon  he  gave  up  that 
privileged  seat  to  stay  with  my  Uncle  and  myself  inside. 
His  greeting  was  always  charming.  He  would  take  a  hand 
of  each  of  us,  hold  the  two  in  his  for  a  minute  or  so  beam- 
ing upon  us,  never  saying  very  much.  I  remember  his 
leading  us  once,  with  our  hands  still  in  his,  from  the  fruit- 
stand  to  the  tobacconist's  opposite  to  point  out  to  my 


THE  ELEVATED  AT  MARKET  STREET  WHARF 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       329 

Uncle  the  wooden  figure  of  an  Indian  at  the  door,  for 
which  he  professed  a  great  admiration  as  an  example  of  the 
art  of  the  people  before  they  were  trained  in  the  Minor 
Arts, 

These  chance  meetings  were  always  the  best,  and  he 
told  us  that  he  thought  them  so,  that  he  loved  his  accidental 
meetings  Avith  friends — there  were  many  he  prized  among 
his  most  valued  reminiscences.  And  I  remember  his  story 
of  Longfellow  having  gone  over  to  Camden  purposely  to 
call  on  him,  and  not  finding  him  at  home,  and  their  run- 
ning into  each  other  on  the  ferry-boat  to  Market  Street, 
and  Longfellow  saying  that  he  had  come  from  the  house 
deepl}^  disappointed,  regretting  the  long  quiet  talk  he  had 
hoped  for,  but  deciding  that  perhaps  the  strange  chance 
of  the  meeting  on  the  water  was  better.  JNIy  Uncle,  had  he 
been  hurrying  to  catch  a  train,  would  still  have  managed 
to  talk  philosophy  and  art  education.  But  I  remember 
Walt  Whitman  also  saying  that  the  ferry  and  the  corner 
of  Market  Street  and  the  Market  Street  car  were  hardly 
places  for  abstract  discussion,  though  the  few  things  said 
there  were  the  less  easily  forgotten  for  being  snatched 
joyfully  by  the  way. 

It  was  one  day  in  the  Market  Street  car  that  he  and 
my  Uncle  had  the  talk  which  left  with  me  the  profoundest 
impression.  As  a  rule  I  was  too  engrossed  in  thinking 
what  a  great  person  I  was,  when  in  such  company,  to  shine 
as  a  reporter.     But  on  this  occasion  the  subject  was  the 


330  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

School  of  Industrial  Arts  in  which  I  was  giving  my  Uncle 
the  benefit  of  my  incompetent  assistance.  He  asked  Walt 
Whitman  to  come  and  see  it,  telling  him  a  little  of  its 
aims  and  methods.  Whitman  refused,  amiably  but  posi- 
tively. I  cannot  recall  his  exact  words,  but  I  gathered 
from  them  that  he  had  no  sympathy  with  schemes  savoiu*- 
ing  of  benevolence  or  reform,  that  he  believed  in  leaving 
people  to  work  out  their  own  salvation,  and  this,  coming 
as  it  did  after  I  had  seen  for  myself  the  terms  he  was  on 
with  the  driver  and  conductor,  expressed  more  eloquently 
than  his  verse  his  definition  of  democracy.  I  may  be  mis- 
taken, but  I  thought  then  and  have  ever  since  that  his  be- 
lief in  the  people  carried  him  to  the  point  of  thinking  they 
knew  better  than  the  philanthropist  what  they  needed  and 
did  not  need.  My  Uncle  was  not  of  accord  with  him  and  I, 
who  am  neither  democrat  nor  philanthropist,  would  not 
pretend  to  decide  between  them.  My  Uncle  did  not  like 
Walt  Whitman's  attitude  and  refusal,  convinced  as  he  was 
of  the  good  to  the  people  that  was  to  come  of  the  reform 
he  was  initiating,  though  he  was  constitutionally  incapable 
of  meeting  the  people  he  was  reforming  on  equal  terms.. 
The  twinkle  in  Walt  Whitman's  eye  when  he  refused  gave 
me  the  clue  to  the  large  redeeming  humour  with  which  he 
looked  upon  a  foolish  world,  seeing  each  individual  in  the 
place  appointed,  right  in  it,  fitting  into  it,  unfit  for  any 
other  he  did  not  make  for  himself  of  his  own  desire  and 
courage — the  humour  without  which  the  human  tragedy 
would  not  be  bearable. 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       331 

I  wish  I  could  have  had  more  talk  with  Whitman,  I 
wish  I  had  been  older  or  more  experienced,  that  I  might 
have  got  nearer  to  him- — or  so  I  felt  in  those  old  days.  I 
have  now  an  idea  that  his  silence  was  more  effective  than 
his  speech,  that  if  he  had  said  more  to  any  of  his  de- 
voted following  he  might  have  been  less  of  a  prophet.  But 
his  tranquil  presence  was  in  itself  sufficient  to  open  a  new 
outlook,  and  it  reconciled  me  to  the  scheme  of  the  universe 
for  good  or  for  ill.  His  personality  impressed  me  far 
more  than  his  poems.  It  seemed  to  me  to  explain  them, 
to  interpret  them,  as  nothing  else  could — his  few  words  of 
greeting  worth  pages  of  the  critic's  eloquent  analysis. 


CHAPTER  XIII:    PHILADELPHIA 
AND  LITERATURE— CONTINUED 


I  HAD  glimpses  into  other  literary  vistas,  but  mostly 
from  a  respectful  and  highly  appreciative  distance. 
How  I  wish  I  could  recapture  even  as  much  as  the 
shadow  of  the  old  rapturous  awe  with  which  any  man  or 
Woman  who  had  ever  made  a  book  inspired  me ! 

There  was  reason  for  awe  when  the  man  was  Dr. 
Horace  Howard  Furness,  the  editor  of  Shakespeare,  and 
if  Philadelphia  knew  its  duty  better  than  to  draw  attention 
to  so  scholarly  a  performance  by  a  Philadelphian,  scholars 
out  of  Philadelphia,  Avho  were  not  hampered  by  Philadel- 
phia conventions,  hailed  it  as  the  best  edition  of  Shake- 
speare there  could  be.  I  must  always  regret  that  in  his 
case  I  succeeded  in  having  no  more  than  the  glimpse. 
Most  of  my  literary  introductions  came  through  my  Uncle 
who,  though  he  knew  Dr.  Furness,  saw  less  and  less  of 
him  as  time  went  on,  partly  I  think  because  of  one  of  those 
small  misunderstandings  that  are  more  unpardonable  than 
the  big  offences — certainly  they  were  to  my  Uncle.  Dr. 
Furness'  father,  old  Dr.  Furness  the  Unitarian  INIinister, 
meeting  him  in  the  street  one  day,  asked  him  gaily,  but  I 
have  no  doubt  with  genuine  interest,  how  his  fad,  the  school, 
was  getting  on.  ISIy  Uncle,  who  could  not  stand  having  an 

332 


-^ 


DR.  FURNESSS  HOUSE,  WEST  WASfflNGTON  SQUARE 

JUST  BEFORE  IT  WAS  PULLED  DOWN 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       335 

enterprise  so  serious  to  him  treated  lightly  by  others,  re- 
torted by  asking  Dr.  Furness  how  his  fad  the  pulpit  was 
getting  on.  The  result  was  coolness.  The  chances  are  that 
Dr.  Furness  never  realized  the  enormity  of  which  he  had 
been  guilty,  but  my  Uncle  could  neither  forget  his  jest 
nor  forgive  him  and  his  family  for  it.  And  his  heart  was 
not  softened  mitil  many  years  afterwards,  when  in  far 
Florence  he  heard  that  Dr.  Furness  wished  for  his  return 
to  Philadelphia  that  he  might  vindicate  his  claim,  in  danger 
of  being  overlooked,  as  the  first  to  have  introduced  the 
.study  of  the  JNIinor  Arts  into  the  Public  Schools. 

Mrs.  Wister  was  another  Philadelphia  literary  ce- 
lebrity whose  work  had  made  her  known  to  all  America 
by  name,  the  only  way  she  was  known  to  me.  It  was  my 
loss,  for  they  say  she  was  more  charming  than  her  work. 
But  to  Philadelphia  no  charm  of  personality,  no  popularity 
of  work,  could  shed  lustre  upon  her  name,  which  was  her 
chief  glory:  literature  was  honoured  when  a  Wister 
stooped  to  its  practice.  On  her  translations  of  German 
novels,  Philadelphians  of  my  generation  were  brought  up. 
After  Faith  Gartney's  Girlhood  and  Queechy  and  The 
Wide  Wide  World,  no  tales  were  considered  so  innocuous 
for  the  young,  not  yet  provided  with  the  mild  and  ex- 
emplary adventures  of  the  tedious  Elsie.  Would  the  Old 
Mam'selle's  Secret  survive  re-reading,  I  wonder?  The 
favourites  of  yesterday  have  a  way  of  turning  into  the 
bores  of  to-day.  Not  long  ago  I  tried  re-reading  Scott 
whom  in  my  youth  I  adored,  but  his  once  magnificent 


336  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

heroes  had  dwindled  into  puppets,  their  brilliant  exploits 
into  the  empty  bombast  of  Drury  Lane  and  Wardour 
Street.  If  Scott  cannot  stand  the  test,  what  hope  for  the 
other  old  loves?    I  risk  no  more  lost  illusions. 

From  no  less  a  distance  I  looked  to  Mrs.  Rebecca 
Harding  Davis  who,  with  Mrs.  Wister,  helped  to  supply 
the  country  with  fiction,  in  her  case  priginal,  while  her  son, 
Richard  Harding  Davis,  was  on  the  sensational  brink 
of  his  career.  And  again  from  a  distance  I  looked  to 
Frank  Stockton,  with  no  idea  that  he  was  a  Philadelphia 
celebrity — very  likely  every  other  Philadelphian  was  as 
ignorant,  but  that  is  no  excuse  for  me.  I  had  not  found 
him  out  as  my  fellow  citizen  when  I  saw  much  of  him  some 
years  later  in  London,  nor  did  I  find  it  out  until  recently 
when,  distrustful  of  my  Philadelphia  tendency  to  look 
the  other  way  if  Philadelphians  are  distinguishing  them- 
selves, I  consulted  the  authorities  to  make  sure  how  great 
or  how  small  was  my  knowledge  of  Philadelphia  literature. 
From  all  this  it  will  be  seen  that  in  those  remote  days  I  was 
very  much  on  the  literary  outside  in  Philadelphia,  but  with 
the  luck  there  to  run  up  against  some  of  the  giants. 

Into  the  vista  of  the  poets  chance  gave  me  one  brief 
but  more  intimate  glimpse.  In  a  Germantown  house — I 
am  puzzled  at  this  day  to  say  whose — I  was  introduced  one 
evening  to  Mrs.  Florence  Earle  Coates  and  Dr.  Francis 
Howard  Williams,  both  already  laurel-crowned,  at  a  small 
gathering  over  which  Walt  Whitman  presided.  In  his  grey 
coat  and  soft  shirt  I   remember  he  struck  me  as  more 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       337 

dressed  than  the  guests  in  their  evening  clothes,  but  I 
remember  he  also  struck  me  as  less  at  home  in  the  worship- 
ping parlour  than  in  the  bootblack's  corner.  The  eloquence 
of  his  presence  stands  out  in  my  memory  vividly,  though  I 
have  forgotten  the  name  of  the  host  or  hostess  to  whom  1 
am  indebted  for  enjoying  it,  and  I  think  it  must  have  been 
then  that  I  began  to  suspect  there  was  more  of  a  literary 
life  in  Philadelphia  than  I  had  imagined.  I  had  no  oppor- 
tunity to  get  further  than  my  suspicion,  for  it  was  very 
shortly  after  that  J.  and  I  undertook  to  carry  out  the  plans 
we  had  been  making  on  the  old  bench  by  the  river  in 
Bartram's  Garden.  Walt  Whitman  I  never  saw  again, 
and  of  the  group  assembled  about  him  nothing  for  many 
years. 

I  came  into  closer  contact  with  writers  to  whom  litera- 
ture and  journalism  were  not  merely  a  method  of  ex- 
pression, but  a  means  of  livelihood.  Philadelphia,  with  its 
magazines,  as  with  so  much  else,  had  shown  the  way  and 
other  towns  had  lost  no  time  in  following  and  getting 
ahead.  New  York  was  in  the  magazine  ascendant.  The 
Century  and  Harper  s  had  replaced  Graham's  and  Godey's 
Lady's  Book  and  Peterson's.  But  Lipyincott's  remained, 
and  though  the  Editor,  after  his  cruel  letter  of  refusal, 
never  deigned  to  notice  me,  it  was  some  satisfaction  to  have 
been  in  actual  correspondence  with  an  author  as  dis- 
tinguished as  John  Foster  Kirk,  the  historian  of  Charles 
the  Bold.  When  Our  Continent  was  labouring  to  revive  the 
old  tradition  of  Philadelphia  as  a  centre  of  publishers  and 

22 


338  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

periodicals,  I  got  as  far  as  the  editorial  office — very  far 
indeed  in  my  opinion — and  there  once  or  twice  I  saw  Judge 
Tourgee,  who  had  abandoned  his  reconstructive  mission 
and  judicial  duties  for  an  editorial  post  in  Philadelphia, 
and  who  at  the  moment  was  more  talked  about  than  any 
American  author,  his  Fool's  Errand  having  given  him  the 
sort  of  fame  that  Looking  Backward  brought  to  Bellamy: 
ephemeral,  but  colossal  while  it  lasted.  Curiously,  I  recall 
nothing  of  the  man  himself — not  his  appearance,  his 
manner,  his  talk.  I  think  it  must  have  been  because,  for 
me,  he  was  overshadowed  by  his  Art  Editor,  Miss  Emily 
Sartain;  my  interest  in  him  eclipsed  by  my  admiration  for 
her  and  my  envy  of  a  woman,  so  young  and  so  handsome, 
who  had  attained  to  such  an  influential  and  responsible 
post.  I  thought  if  I  ever  should  reach  half  way  up  so 
stupendous  a  height,  I  could  die  content.  Louise  Stockton, 
Frank  Stockton's  sister,  and  Helen  Campbell  were  on  the 
staff,  in  my  eyes  amazing  women  with  regular  weekly  tasks 
and  regular  weekly  salaries.  I  might  argue  for  my  com- 
fort that  there  was  greater  liberty  in  being  a  free  lance, 
but  how  wonderful  to  do  work  that  an  editor  wanted  every 
week,  was  willing  to  pay  for  every  week! — ^wonderful  to 
me,  anj'way,  who  had  just  had  my  first  taste  of  earning 
an  income,  but  not  of  earning  it  regularly  and  without 
fail.  My  Uncle  wrote  more  than  once  for  Tourgee;  J. 
and  I  contributed  those  articles  which  were  further  excuses 
for  our  walks  together:  Judge  Tourgee,  to  his  own  loss, 
thinking  it  a  recommendation  for  a  contributor  to  be  a 


THE  GERMANTOWN  ACADEMY 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE        341 

Philadelphian  as  he  would  not  have  thought  had  he  known 
his  Philadelphia  better.  Our  Continent  was  too  Philadel- 
phian to  be  approved  in  Philadelphia  or  to  be  in  demand 
out  of  it.  One  symbol  of  literary  respectability  the  town 
had  in  Lippincott's,  and  one  was  as  much  as  it  could  then 
support.  Our  Continent  came  to  an  end  either  just  before 
or  just  after  J.  and  I  set  out  on  our  travels.  There  were 
other  women  in  journalism  who  excited  my  envy.  Mrs. 
Lucy  Hooper's  letters  to  the  Evening  Telegraph  struck 
me  as  the  last  and  fmest  word  in  foreign  correspondence. 
I  never,  even  upon  closer  acquaintance,  lost  my  awe  of 
JNIrs.  Sarah  Hallowell  who  was  intimately  associated  with 
the  Ledger,  or  of  jNIiss  Julia  Ewing,  though  her  associa- 
tion with  the  same  paper  had  nothing  to  do  with  its  literary 
side. 

II 

Now  and  then  I  was  stirred  to  the  depths  by  my 
glimpse  of  writers  from  other  parts  of  the  world.  It  was 
onlj'  when  a  prophet  was  a  home  product  that  Philadel- 
phia kept  its  eyes  tight  shut ;  when  the  prophet  came  from 
another  town  it  opened  them  wide,  and  its  arms  wider  than 
its  eyes,  and  showed  him  what  a  strenuous  business  it  was 
to  be  the  victim  of  Philadelphia  hospitality.  It  was  rather 
pleased  if  the  prophet  happened  to  be  a  lord,  or  had  a 
handle  of  some  kind  to  his  name,  but  an  author  would 
answer  for  want  of  something  better,  especially  if  he  came 
from  abroad.  No  Englishman  on  a  lecture  tour  was 
allowed  to  pass  by  Philadelphia. 


342  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Immediately  on  his  arrival,  the  distinguished  visitor 
was  appropriated  by  George  W.  Childs,  who  had  under- 
taken to  play  in  Philadelphia  the  part  of  the  Lord  ISIayor 
in  the  City  of  London  and  do  the  town's  official  enter- 
taining, and  who  was  known  far  and  wide  for  it — "  he  has 
entertained  all  the  English  who  come  over  here,"  Matthew 
Arnold  wrote  home  of  him,  and  visitors  of  every  other 
nationality  could  have  written  the  same  of  their  own  people 
passing  through  Philadelphia.  You  would  meet  him  in  the 
late  afternoon,  fresh  from  the  Ledger  office,  strolling  up 
Chestnut  Street  of  which  he  was  another  of  the  conspicu- 
ous figures — not  because  of  any  personal  beauty,  but  be- 
cause he  did  not  believe  in  the  Philadelphia  practice  of 
hiding  one's  light  under  a  bushel,  and  had  managed  to 
make  himself  known  by  sight  to  every  other  man  and 
woman  in  the  street;  just  as  old  Richard  Vaux  was;  or 
old  "  Aunt  Ad  "  Thompson,  everybody's  aunt,  in  her  bril- 
liant finery,  growing  ever  more  brilliant  with  years;  or 
that  distinguished  lawyer,  Ben  Brewster,  "  Burnt-faced 
Brewster,"  whose  genius  for  the  law  made  every  one  forget 
the  terrible  marks  a  fire  in  his  childliood  had  left  upon  his 
face.  Philadelphia  would  not  have  been  Philadelphia 
without  these  familiar  figures.  Childs  seldom  appeared  on 
Chestnut  Street  without  Tony  Drexel,  straight  from 
some  big  operation  on  the  Stock  Exchange,  the  two  repre- 
senting all  that  was  most  successful  in  the  newspaper 
and  banking  world  of  Philadelphia:  their  friendship 
now  commemorated  in  that  new  combination  of  names 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       343 

as  familiar  to  the  new  and  changing  generation  as 
Cadwallader-Biddle  was  to  the  old  and  changeless.  Be- 
tween them  it  was  the  exception  when  there  was  not  an 
emperor,  or  a  prince,  or  an  author,  or  an  actor,  or  some 
other  variety  of  a  distinguished  visitor  being  put  through 
his  paces  and  shown  life  in  Philadelphia,  on  the  way  to  the 
house  of  one  or  the  other  and  to  the  feast  prepared  in  his 
honour.  At  the  feast,  if  there  was  speaking  to  be  done,  it 
was  invariably  Wayne  MacVeagh  who  did  it.  As  I 
was  not  greatly  in  demand  at  public  functions,  I  heard 
him  but  once — a  memorable  occasion  which  did  not,  how- 
ever, impress  me  with  the  brilliance  of  his  oratorJ^ 

Matthew  Arnold,  the  latest  distinguished  visitor,  was 
to  lecture,  and  I  had  been  looking  forward  to  the  evening* 
with  an  ardour  for  which  alas!  I  have  lost  the  faculty. 
Literary  celebrities  were  still  novelties — more  than  that, 
divinities — in  my  eyes.  Among  them,  Matthew  Arnold 
held  particularly  high  rank,  one  of  the  chief  heroes  of  my 
worship,  and  many  of  my  contemporaries  worshipped  with 
me.  Youth  M^as  then,  as  always,  acutely  conscious  of  the 
burden  of  life,  and  we  made  our  luxury  of  his  pessimism. 
I  could  spout  whole  passages  of  his  poems,  whole  poems 
when  they  were  short,  though  now  I  could  not  probably 
get  further  than  their  titles.  There  had  been  a  dinner 
first — there  always  was  a  dinner  first  in  Philadelphia — and 
a  Philadelphia  dinner  being  no  light  matter,  he  arrived  late. 
The  delay  would  have  done  no  harm  had  not  Wayne  Mac- 
Veagh, who  presided,  introduced  him  in  a  speech  to  which. 


344  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

once  it  was  started,  there  seemed  no  end.  It  went  on  and 
on,  the  audience  growing  restless,  with  Matthew  Arnold 
himself  an  object  of  pity,  so  obvious  was  his  embarrass- 
ment. Few  lecturers  could  have  saved  the  situation,  and 
Matthew  Arnold  would  have  been  a  dull  one  under  the 
most  favourable  circumstances.  I  went  away  disillusioned, 
reconciled  to  meeting  my  heroes  in  their  books.  And  I 
coidd  understand  when,  years  later,  I  read  the  letters  he 
wrote  home,  why  the  tulip  trees  seemed  to  have  as  much  to 
do  as  the  people  in  making  Philadelphia  the  most  attrac- 
tive city  he  had  seen  in  America. 

Another  distinguished  visitor  who  lectured  about  this 
period  came  off  more  gaily: — Oscar  AVilde,  to  whose 
lecture  I  had  looked  forward  M'ith  no  particular  excitement, 
for  I  was  young  enough  to  feel  only  impatience  with  his 
pose.  After  listening  to  him,  I  had  to  admit  that  he  was 
amusing.  His  affected  dress,  his  deliberate  posturings,  his 
flamboyant  phrases  and  slow  lingering  over  them  as  if  loth 
to  let  them  go,  made  him  an  exhilarating  contrast  to 
Matthew  Arnold,  shocked  as  I  was  by  a  writer  to  whom 
literature  was  not  always  in  dead  earnest,  nor  to  teach  its 
goal,  ev^en  though  it  was  part  of  his  pose  to  ape  the  teacher, 
the  voice  in  the  wilderness.  And  he  was  so  refreshingly  en- 
thusiastic when  off  the  platform,  as  I  saw  him  afterwards  in 
my  Uncle's  rooms.  He  let  himself  go  without  reserve  as  he 
recalled  the  impressions  of  his  visit  to  Walt  Whitman  in 
Camden  and  his  meeting  with  the  cowboy  in  the  West. 
To  him,  the  cowboy  was  the  most  picturesque  product  of 


■V. 


'-?Ai^ 


7,,  ''r''V'-''i' 


J 


s~--n:X 


\  • 


THE  STATE  HOUSE  FROM  INDEPENDENCE  SQUARE 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       347 

America  from  whom  he  borrowed  hat  and  cloak  and  ap- 
peared in  them,  an  amazing  spectacle.  And  I  find  in  some 
prim,  priggish,  distressingly  useless  little  notes  I  made  at 
the  time,  that  it  was  a  perfect,  a  supreme  moment  when  he 
talked  to  Walt  Whitman  who  had  been  to  him  the  master, 
at  whose  feet  he  had  sat  since  he  was  a  young  lad,  and  who 
was  as  pure  and  earnest  and  noble  and  grand  as  he  had 
hoped.  That  to  Walt  Whitman,  Oscar  Wilde  seemed  "  a 
great  big  splendid  boy  "  is  now  matter  of  history. 

I  know  that  Philadelphia  entertained  Wilde,  and  so  I 
fancy  him  staying  with  George  AV.  Childs,  dining  with 
Tony  Drexel,  and  being  talked  to  after  dinner  by  Wayne 
MacVeagh,  though  I  cannot  be  sure,  as  Philadelphia,  with 
singular  lack  of  appreciation,  included  me  in  none  of  the 
entertaining.  I  saw  him  only  in  Horticultural  Hall,  where 
he  lectured,  and  at  my  Uncle's.  This  was  seeing  him  often 
enough  to  be  confirmed  in  my  conviction  that  literature 
might  be  a  stimulating  and  emotional  adventure. 

Many  interesting  people  of  many  varieties  were  to  be 
met  in  my  Uncle's  rooms.  I  remember  the  George  Lath- 
rops  who,  like  Lowell  and  Poe  of  old,  had  come  to  Phila- 
delphia for  work:  Lathrop  rather  embittered  and  dis- 
appointed, I  thought;  Mrs.  Lathrop — Rose  Hawthorne — 
a  marvellous  woman  in  my  estimation,  not  because  of  her 
beautiful  gold-red  hair,  nor  her  work,  which  I  do  not  be- 
lieve was  of  special  importance,  but  as  the  daughter  of 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  therefore  a  link  between  me  in 
m\^  insignificance  and  the  great  of  Brook  Farm  and  Con- 


348  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

cord.  I  remember  editors  from  New  York,  impressive 
creatures ;  and  jNIembers  of  Parliament,  hangers-on  of  the 
literary  world  of  London ;  and  actresses,  its  lions,  when  in 
England : — Janauschek,  heavily  tragic  off  as  on  the  stage, 
for  whom  my  Uncle's  admiration  was  less  limited  than 
mine;  and  ]Miss  Genevieve  Ward,  playing  in  Forget-Me- 
Not,  her  one  big  success,  for  she  failed  in  the  popularity  to 
repeat  it  that  comes  so  easily  to  many  less  accomplished. 
How  timidly  I  sat  and  listened,  marvelling  to  find  myself 
there,  feeling  like  the  humble  who  shall  be  exalted  in  the 
Bible,  looking  upon  my  Uncle's  rooms  as  the  literary 
threshold  from  which  I  was  graciously  permitted  to  watch 
the  glorious  company  within. 

Ill 

I  had  gone  no  further  than  this  first,  tremulous  ardent 
stage  in  my  career  when  my  Uncle  deserted  his  memorable 
rooms  never  to  return,  and  J.  and  I  started  on  the  journey 
that  we  thought  might  last  a  yesiT — as  long  as  the  money 
held  out,  we  had  said,  to  the  discomfort  of  the  family  who 
no  doubt  saw  me  promptly  on  their  hands  again — and  that 
did  not  bring  me  back  to  Philadelphia  for  over  a  quarter 
of  a  century.  Of  literary  events  during  my  absence,  some- 
body else  must  make  the  record. 

When  I  did  go  back  after  all  those  years,  I  was  con- 
scious that  there  must  have  been  events  for  a  record  to  be 
made  of,  or  I  could  not  have  accounted  for  the  change. 
Literature   was  now  in  the   air.    Local   prophets   were 


i-'ijiji^V*  ♦*^v.-'Rtr«--J5<5.WWTi' 


'THE  LIITLE  STREET  OF  CLUBS,"  CAMAC  STREET  ABOVE  SPRUCE  STREET 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       351 

acknowledged,  if  not  by  all  Philadelphia,  by  little  groups 
of  satellites  revolving  round  them.  Literary  lights  had 
come  from  under  the  bushel  and  were  shining  in  high 
places.  Societies  had  been  industriously  multiplying  for 
the  encouragement  of  literature.  All  such  encouragement 
in  my  time  had  devolved  upon  the  Penn  Club  that  patron- 
ized literature,  among  its  other  interests,  and  wrote  about 
books  in  its  monthly  journal  and  invited  their  authors  to 
its  meetings.  During  my  absence,  not  only  had  the  Penn 
Club  continued  to  flourish — to  such  good  purpose  that  J. 
and  I  were  honoured  by  one  of  these  invitations  and  felt 
that  never  again  could  Fame  and  Fate  bring  us  such  a 
triumphant  moment,  except  when  the  Academy  of  Fine 
Arts  paid  us  the  same  honour  and  so  upset  our  old  belief 
that  no  Philadelphian  could  ever  be  a  prophet  in  Philadel- 
phia!— but  Philadelphia  had  broken  out  into  a  multitude 
of  Clubs  and  Societies,  beginning  with  the  Franklin  Inn, 
for  Franklin  is  not  to  be  got  away  from  even  in  Clubland, 
and  his  Inn,  I  am  assured,  is  the  most  comprehensive 
literary  centre  to  which  every  author,  every  artist,  every 
editor,  every  publisher  who  thinks  himself  something  be- 
longs to  the  number  of  one  hundred — ^that  there  should  be 
the  chance  of  one  hundred  with  the  right  to  think  them- 
selves something  in  Philadelphia  is  the  wonder! — and  in 
the  house  in  Camac  Street,  which  one  Philadelphian  I 
know  calls  "  The  Little  Street  of  Clubs,"  the  members 
meet  for  light  lunch  and  much  talk  and,  it  may  be,  other 
rites  of  which  I  could  speak  only  from  hearsay,  my  sex 


352  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

disqualifying  me  from  getting  my  knowledge  of  them 
at  first  hand.  And  there  is  a  Business  and  Professional 
Club  and  a  Poor  Richard,  bringing  one  back  to  Franklin 
again,  in  the  same  Little  Street.  And  there  are  Browning 
Societies,  and  Shakespeare  Societies,  and  Drama-Reform- 
ing Societies,  and  Pegasus  Societies,  and  Societies  for 
members  to  read  their  own  works  to  each  other ;  and  more 
Societies  than  the  parent  Society  discoursing  in  the  woods 
along  the  Schuylkill  could  have  dreamed  of:  with  the 
Contemporary  Club  to  assemble  their  variously  divided 
ends  and  objects  under  one  head,  and  to  entertain  litera- 
ture as  George  W.  Childs  had  entertained  it,  and,  going 
further,  to  pay  literature  for  being  entertained,  if  literature 
expresses  itself  in  the  form  of  readings  and  lectures  by 
those  who  practise  it  professionally.  The  change  dis- 
concerted me  more  than  ever  when  I,  Philadelphia  born, 
was  assured  of  a  profitable  welcome  if  I  would  speak  to 
the  Club  on  ami;hing.  The  invitation  was  tentative  and 
unofficial,  but  the  Contemporary  Club  need  be  in  no 
fear.  It  may  make  the  invitation  official  if  it  will,  and 
never  a  penny  the  poorer  will  it  be  for  my  presence:  I 
am  that  now  rare  creature,  a  shy  woman  subject  to  stage 
fright.  And  I  cannot  help  thinking  that,  despite  the 
amiability  to  the  native,  the  stranger,  simply  because  he  is 
a  stranger,  continues  to  have  the  preference,  so  many  are 
the  Englishmen  and  Englishwomen  invited  to  deliver 
themselves  before  the  Club  who  never  could  gather  an 
audience  at  home. 


DOWN  SANSOM  STREET  FROM  EIGHTH  STREET 


THE  LOW  HOUSES  AT  SEVENTH  STREET  HAVE  SINCE  BEEN  TORN  DOWN  AND  THE  WESTERN   END  OF  THE  CURTIS  BUILDING^NOW  OCCUPIES 

THEIR  PLACE 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       355 

And  Philadelphia  has  recaptured  the  lead  in  the 
periodical  publication  that  pays,  and  I  found  the  Curtis 
Building  the  biggest  sky-scraper  in  Philadelphia,  tower- 
ing above  the  quiet  of  Independence  Square,  a  brick 
and  marble  and  pseudo-classical  monument  to  the  Ladies' 
Home  Journal  and  the  Saturday  Evening  Post,  and  if  in 
the  race  literature  lags  behind,  what  matter  when  merit  is 
vouched  for  in  solid  dollars  and  cents?  What  matter, 
when  the  winds  of  heaven  conspire  with  bricks  and  mortar 
to  make  the  passer-by  respect  it?  I  am  told  that  on  a 
windy  day  no  man  can  pass  the  building  without  a  fight 
for  it,  and  no  woman  without  the  help  of  stalwart  police- 
men. In  her  own  organ  of  fashion  and  feminine  senti- 
ment, she  has  raised  up  a  power  against  which,  even  with 
the  vote  to  back  her,  she  could  not  prevail. 

And  Philadelphia  is  not  content  to  have  produced  the 
first  daily  newspaper  but  is  bent  on  making  it  as  big  as  it 
can  be  made  anywhere.  If  I  preserved  my  morning 
paper  for  two  or  three  days  in  my  hotel  bedroom,  I  fairly 
waded  in  newspapers.  On  Sundays  if  I  carried  up- 
stairs only  the  Ledger  and  the  North  American,  I  was 
deep  in  a  flood  of  Comic  Supplements,  and  Photograph 
Supplements,  and  Sport  Supplements,  and  every  possible 
sort  of  Supplement  that  any  other  American  newspaper 
in  any  other  American  town  can  boast  of — all  the  sad 
stuff  that  nobody  has  time  to  look  at  but  is  what  the  news- 
paper editor  is  under  the  delusion  that  the  public  wants — 
in  Philadelphia,  one  genuine  Philadelphia  touch  added 


356  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

in  the  letters  and  gossip  of  "  Peggy  Shippen  "  and  "  Sally 
Wister,"  names  with  the  double  recommendation  to  Phila- 
delphia of  venerable  age  and  unquestionable  Philadelphia 
respectability. 

And  I  found  that  the  Philadelphia  writer  has  increased 
in  numbers  and  in  popularity,  whether  for  better  or  worse 
I  will  not  say.  I  have  not  the  coul-age  for  the  role  of 
critic  on  my  own  hearth,  knowing  the  penalty  for  too  much 
honesty  at  home.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  why  I  should 
hesitate  and  bungle  and  make  myself  unpleasant  enemies 
in  doing  indifferently  what  Philadelphia,  in  its  new 
incarnation,  does  with  so  much  grace.  I  have  now  but 
to  name  the  Philadelphian's  book  in  Philadelphia  to  be 
informed  that  it  is  monumental — but  to  mention  the 
Philadelphia  writer  of  verse  to  hear  that  he  is  a  marvel — 
but  to  enquire  for  the  Philadelphia  writer  of  prose  to  be 
assured  that  he  is  a  genius.  There  is  not  the  weeest,  most 
modest  little  Philadelphia  goose  that  does  not  sail  along 
valiantly  in  the  Philadelphia  procession  of  swans.  The 
new  pose  is  prettier  than  the  old  if  scarcely  more  success- 
ful in  preserving  a  sense  of  proportion,  and  it  saves  me 
from  committing  myself.  I  can  state  the  facts  that  strike 
me,  without  prejudice,  as  the  lawyers  say. 

IV 

One  is  that  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  has  interested 
the  Philadelphia  writer  in  Philadelphia  as  he  had  not  been 
since  the  daj^s  of  John  Watson.     Most  Philadelphians 


AT  STENTON 


trtl    tij 


n<n  /.aT^  TA 


\       :■ 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       357 

owned  a  copy  of  Watson's  Annals.  I  have  one  on  my 
desk  before  me  that  belonged  to  J.'s  Father,  one  must 
have  been  in  my  Grandfather's  highly  correct  Phila- 
delphia house,  though  I  cannot  recall  it  there,  for  a 
Philadelphian's  duty  was  to  buy  Watson  just  as  it  was  to 
take  in  Lippincott's,  and  Philadelphians  never  shirked 
their  obligations.  They  probably  would  not  have  been 
able  to  say  what  was  in  Watson,  or,  if  they  could,  would 
have  shrugged  their  shoulders  and  dismissed  him  for  a 
crank.  But  they  would  have  owned  the  Annals,  all  the 
same.  Then  the  Centennial  shook  them  up  and  insisted  on 
the  value  of  Philadelphia's  historj^  and  Philadelphians 
were  no  longer  in  fashion  if  they  did  not  feel,  or  affect, 
an  interest  in  Philadelphia  and  its  past.  After  the  Cen- 
tennial the  few  who  began  to  write  about  it  could  rely 
upon  the  many  to  read  about  it. 

Once,  the  Philadelphian  who  was  not  ashamed  to  write 
stories  made  them  out  of  the  fashionable  life  of  Philadel- 
phia. Dr.  Weir  INIitchell  inaugurated  the  new  era,  or  the 
revolt,  or  the  secession,  or  whatever  name  may  be  given 
it  with  the  first  historical  novel  of  Philadelphia.  It  is 
fortunate,  when  I  come  to  Hugh  Wynne,  that  I  have  re- 
nounced criticism  and  all  its  pretences.  As  a  Friend  by 
marriage,  if  such  a  thing  is  possible,  I  cannot  underesti- 
mate the  danger.  Only  a  Friend  born  a  Friend  is  quali- 
fied to  write  the  true  Quaker  novel,  and  I  am  told  by  this 
kind  of  Friend  that  Hugh  Wynne  is  not  free  from  mis- 
representations,  misconceptions   and  misunderstandings. 


358  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

This  may  be  true — I  breathe  more  freely  for  not  being 
able  to  affirm  or  to  deny  it — but,  as  Henley  used  to  say, 
there  it  is — the  first  romantic  gold  out  of  the  mine  Phila- 
delphia history  is  for  all  who  work  it.  Since  these  lines 
were  written  the  news  has  reached  me  that  never  again 
will  Dr.  Mitchell  work  this  or  any  other  mine.  I  cannot 
imagine  Philadelphia  without  him.  When  I  last  saw  him, 
it  seemed  to  me  that  no  Philadelphian  was  more  alive, 
more  in  love  with  life,  better  equipped  to  enjoy  life  in  the 
way  Philadelphia  has  fashioned  it — ^the  Philadelphia  life 
in  which  his  passing  away  must  leave  no  less  a  gap  than 
the  disappearance  of  the  State  House  or  the  Pennsylvania 
Hospital  would  leave  in  the  Philadelphia  streets.  If  Dr. 
Mitchell's  digging  brought  up  the  romance  of  Philadel- 
phia, Mr.  Sydney  George  Fisher's  has  unearthed  the  facts, 
for  Philadelphia  was  the  root  of  the  great  growth  of  Penn- 
sylvania which  is  the  avowed  subject  of  his  history.  And 
the  men  who  helped  to  make  this  history  have  now  their 
biographers  at  home,  though  hitherto  the  task  of  their 
biograph}^  had  been  left  chieflj^  to  anybody  anywhere  else 
who  would  accept  the  responsibility,  and  my  Brother,  Ed- 
ward Robins,  Secretary  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania, 
has  written  the  life  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  without  whom 
the  University  would  not  have  been,  at  least  would  not 
have  been  what  it  is.  And  in  so  many  different  directions 
has  the  interest  spread  that  my  friend  since  Our  Convent 
Days,  Miss  Agnes  Repplier,  has  taken  time  from  her 


THE  DOUBLE  STAIRWAY  IN  THE  PENNSYLVANIA  HOSPITAL 


I 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       361 

studies  in  literature  and  from  building  a  monument  to  her 
beloved  Agrippina  to  write  its  story.  When  she  sent  me 
her  book,  I  opened  it  with  grave  apprehensions.  In  the 
volumes  she  had  published,  humour  was  the  chief  charm, 
and  how  would  humour  help  her  to  see  Philadelphia?  I 
need  not  have  been  uneasy.  There  is  no  true  humour 
without  tenderness.  If  she  had  her  smile  for  the  town 
we  all  love,  as  we  all  have,  it  was  a  tender  smile,  and  I 
think  no  reader  can  close  her  book  without  wanting  to 
know  still  more  of  Philadelphia  than  it  was  her  special 
business  in  that  place  to  tell  them.  And  that  no  vein  of 
the  Philadelphia  mine  might  be  left  unworked.  Miss  Anne 
Hollingsworth  Wharton  has  busied  herself  to  gather  up 
old  traditions  and  old  reminiscences,  dipping  into  old 
letters  and  diaries,  opening  wide  Colonial  doorways,  resur- 
recting Colonial  Dames,  reshaping  the  old  social  and  do- 
mestic life  disdained  by  historians.  The  numerous  editions 
into  which  her  books  have  gone  explain  that  she  has  not 
worked  for  her  own  edification  alone,  that  Philadelphia, 
once  it  was  willing  to  hear  any  talk  about  itself,  could  not 
hear  too  much.  And  after  Miss  Wharton  have  come  Mr. 
Mather  Lippincott  and  Mr.  Eberlein  to  collect  the  old 
Colonial  houses  and  their  memories,  followed  by  Mr. 
Herbert  C.  Wise  and  Mr.  Beidleman  to  study  their  archi- 
tecture: just  in  time  if  Philadelphia  perseveres  in  its  crime 
of  moving  out  of  the  houses  for  the  benefit  of  the  Russian 
Jew  and  of  mixing  their  memories  with  squalor.     Of  all 


362  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

the  ways  in  which  Philadelphia  has  changed,  none  is  to  me 
more  remarkable  than  in  this  rekindling  of  interest  out 
of  which  has  sprung  the  new  group  of  writers  in  its  praise. 
Nor  were  the  Philadelphia  poets  idle  during  my  ab- 
sence. Dr.  INIitchell  had  not  before  sung  so  freely  in  public, 
nor  had  he  ranked,  as  I  am  told  he  did  at  the  end,  his 
verse  higher  than  his  medicine.  Mrs.  Coates'  voice  had 
not  carried  so  far.  Dr.  Francis  Howard  Williams  had  not 
rhymed  for  Pageants  in  praise  of  Philadelphia.  Mr. 
Harrison  Morris  had  not  joined  the  Philadelphia  choir. 
Mr.  Harvey  ]\I.  Watts  had  not  been  heard  in  the  land.  I 
have  it  on  good  authority  that  yearly  the  Philadelphia 
poets  meet  and  read  their  verses  to  each  other,  a  custom  of 
which  I  cannot  speak  from  personal  knowledge  as  I  have 
no  passport  into  the  magic  circle,  and  perhaps  it  is  just  as 
well  for  my  peace  of  mind  that  I  have  not.  Rumour  de- 
clares that,  on  certain  summer  evenings,  a  suburban  porch 
here  or  there  is  made  as  sweet  with  their  singing  as  with  the 
perfume  of  the  roses  and  syringa  in  the  garden,  and  I  am 
content  with  the  rumour  for  there  is  always  the  chance  the 
music  might  not  be  so  sweet  if  I  heard  it.  I  like  to  re- 
member that  the  poets  on  their  porch,  whether  their  voices 
be  sweet  or  harsh,  descend  in  a  direct  line  from  the  young 
men  who  wandered,  discoursing  of  literature,  along  the 
Schuylkill.  And  Philadelphia's  love  of  poetry  is  to  be 
assured  not  only  by  its  own  singers  but  by  its  care,  now 
as  in  the  past,  for  the  song  of  others.     Horace  Howard 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LITERATURE       363 

Furness,  Jr.,  has  taken  over  his  father's  task  and,  in  so 
doing,  will  see  that  Philadelphia  continues  to  be  famous 
for  the  most  complete  edition  of  Shakespeare. 

There  had  been  equal  activity  during  my  absence 
among  the  story-tellers.  Since  Brockden  Brown,  not  one 
had  written  so  ambitious  a  tale  as  Hugh  Wynne,  not  one 
had  ever  laughed  so  good-humouredly  at  Philadelphia  as 
Thomas  A.  Janvier  in  his  short  stories  of  the  Hutchinson 
Ports  and  Rittenhouse  Smiths — what  gaiety  has  gone  out 
with  his  death !  Not  one  had  ever  seen  character  with  such 
truth  as  Owen  Wister, — if  only  he  could  understand  that 
as  good  material  awaits  him  in  Philadelphia  as  in  Vir- 
ginia and  Wyoming.  And  John  Luther  Long  is  another 
of  the  story-tellers  Philadelphia  can  claim  though,  like 
Mr.  Wister,  he  shows  a  greater  fancy  for  far-away  lands 
or  to  wander  among  strange  people  at  home. 

There  is  no  branch  of  literature  that  Philadelphia  has 
not  taken  under  its  active  protection.  Who  has  con- 
tributed more  learnedly  to  the  records  of  the  Inquisition 
than  Henry  Charles  Lea,  or  to  the  chronicles  of  the  law  in 
the  United  States  than  Mr.  Hampton  L.  Carson  and  ]\Ir. 
Charles  Burr,  duly  conscious  as  Philadelphia  lawyers 
should  be  of  the  Philadelphian's  legal  responsibility?  Who 
can  compete  in  knowledge  of  the  evolution  of  the  playing 
card  Math  INIrs.  John  King  Van  Rensselaer  or  rival  her 
collection?  Who  ever  thought  of  writing  the  history  of 
autobiography  before  Mrs.  Anna  Robeson  Burr?     The 


364  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

time  had  but  to  come  for  an  admirer  to  play  the  Boswell 
to  Walt  Whitman,  and  Mr.  Traubel  appeared.  When 
Colmiibia  wanted  a  Professor  of  Journalism,  Philadel- 
phia sent  it  Dr.  Talcott  Williams.  When  England  seemed 
a  comfortable  shelter  for  research  there  was  no  need  to  be 
in  a  hurry  about,  Mr.  Logan  Pearsall  Smith  showed  what 
could  be  done  with  an  exhaustive  study  of  Dr.  Donne, 
though  why  he  was  not  showing  instead  what  could  be 
done  with  the  Loganian  Library,  where  the  chance  to 
show  it  was  his  for  the  claiming,  he  alone  can  say.  When 
such  recondite  subjects  as  Egyptian  and  Assyrian  called 
for  interpreters,  Philadelphia  was  again  on  the  spot  with 
Mrs.  Cornelius  Stevenson  and  Dr.  Morris  Jastrow.  And 
for  authorities  on  the  drama  and  history,  it  gives  us  Mr. 
Felix  Schelling  and  Dr.  McMaster, — ^but  perhaps  for  me 
to  attempt  to  complete  the  list  would  only  be  to  make  it 
incomplete.  Here,  too,  I  tread  on  dangerous  ground.  It 
may  be  cowardly,  but  it  is  safe  to  give  the  tribute  of  my 
recognition  to  all  that  is  being  accomplished  by  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania  and  its  scholars — by  Bryn  Mawr 
College  and  its  students — by  the  Historical  Society  of 
Pennsylvania — by  other  Colleges  and  learned  bodies — 
by  innumerable  individuals — and  not  invite  exposure  by 
venturing  into  detail  and  upon  comment.  It  is  in  these 
emergencies  that  the  sense  of  my  limitations  comes  to 
my  help. 

At  least  I  am  not  afraid  to  say  that,  on  my  return,  I 


CARPENTER'S  HALL,  BUILT  1771 


PHILADP:LPHIA  and  literature       367 

fancied  I  found  this  side  of  Philadelphia  life  less  a  side 
apart,  less  isolated,  more  identified  with  the  social  side, 
and  the  social  side,  for  its  part,  accepting  the  identification. 
The  University  and  Bryn  Mawr  could  not  have  played 
the  same  social  part  in  the  Philadelphia  I  remember.  Per- 
hajjs  I  shall  express  what  I  mean  more  exactly  if  I  say 
that,  returning  with  fresh  eyes,  I  saw  Philadelphia  ready 
and  pleased,  as  I  had  not  remembered  it,  to  acknowledge 
openly  talents  and  activities  it  once  made  believe  to  ignore 
or  despise — to  go  further  really  and,  having  for  the  first 
time  squarely  faced  its  accomplishments,  for  the  first  time 
to  blow  its  own  trumpet.  The  new  spirit  is  one  I  approve. 
I  would  not  call  all  the  work  that  comes  out  of  Philadel- 
phia monumental,  as  some  Philadelphians  do,  or  Phila- 
delphia itself  a  modern  Athens,  or  the  hub  of  the  literary 
universe,  or  anj^  other  absurd  name.  But  I  do  think  that 
in  literature  and  learning  it  is  now  contributing,  as  it 
always  has  contributed,  its  fair  share  to  the  country,  and 
that  if  Philadelphia  does  not  say  so,  the  rest  of  the  country 
will  not,  for  the  rest  of  the  country  is  still  under  the  delu- 
sion that  Philadelphia  knows  how  to  do  nothing  but  sleep. 


CHAPTER  XIV:    PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART 

I 

IGNORANCE  of  art  and  all  relating  to  it  could  not 
have  been  greater  than  mine  ^when  I  paid  that  first 
eventful  visit  to  J.'s  studio  on  Chestnut  Street. 
I  lay  the  blame  only  partly  on  my  natural  capacity 
for  ignorance.  It  was  a  good  deal  the  fault  of  the  sort  of 
education  I  received  and  the  influences  among  which  I 
lived — the  fault  of  the  place  and  the  period  in  which  I 
grew  up.  Nominally,  art  was  not  neglected  at  the  Con- 
vent. A  drawing-class  was  conducted  by  an  old  bear  of  a 
German,  who  also  gave  music  lessons,  and  who  pros- 
pered so  on  his  monopoly  of  the  arts  with  us  that  he  was 
able  to  live  in  a  delightful  cottage  down  near  the  river. 
Drawing  was  an  "  extra  "  of  which  I  was  never  thought 
worthy,  but  I  used  to  see  the  class  at  the  tables  set  out  for 
the  purpose  in  the  long  low  hall  leading  to  the  Chapel, 
the  master  grumbling  and  growling  and  scolding,  the 
pupils  laboriously  copying  with  crayon  or  chalk  little 
cubes  and  geometrical  figures  or,  at  a  more  advanced 
stage,  the  old-fashioned  copy-book  landscape  and  build- 
ing, rubbing  in  and  rubbing  out,  wrestling  with  the  com- 
position as  if  it  were  a  problem  in  algebra.  The  Convent 
could  take  neither  credit,  nor  discredit,  for  the  system; 
it  was  the  one  then  in  vogue  in  every  school,  fashionable 

368 


INDEPENDENCE  HALL— LENGTHWISE  VIEW 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  371 

or  otherwise,  and  not  so  far  removed,  after  all,  from 
systems  followed  to  this  day  in  certain  Academies  of  Art. 

Another  class  was  devoted  to  an  art  then  considered 
very  beautiful,  called  Grecian  Painting.  It  was  not  my 
privilege  to  study  this  either,  but  I  gathered  from  friends 
who  did  that  it  was  of  the  simplest:  on  the  back  of  an 
engraving,  preferably  of  a  religious  subject  and  pre- 
pared by  an  ingenious  process  that  made  it  transparent, 
the  artist  dabbed  his  colours  according  to  written  instruc- 
tions. The  result,  glazed  and  framed,  was  supposed  to 
resemble,  beyond  the  detection  of  any  save  an  expert,  a 
real  oil  painting  and  was  held  in  high  esteem. 

A  third  class  was  in  the  elegant  art  of  making  wax 
flowers  and,  goodness  knows  why,  my  Father  squandered 
an  appreciable  sum  of  his  declining  fortunes  on  having  me 
taught  it.  I  am  the  more  puzzled  by  his  desire  to  bestow 
upon  me  this  accomplishment  because  none  of  the  other 
girls'  fathers  shared  his  ambition  for  their  daughters  and 
I  was  the  only  member  of  the  class.  Alone,  in  a  room  at 
the  top  of  the  house — chosen  no  doubt  for  the  light,  as  if 
the  deeds  there  done  ought  not  to  have  been  shrouded  in 
darkness — I  worked  many  hours  under  the  tuition  of 
Mother  Alicia,  cutting  up  little  sheets  of  wax  into  leaves 
and  petals,  colouring  them,  sticking  them  together,  and 
producing  in  the  end  two  horrible  masterpieces — one  a 
water-lily  placed  on  a  mirror  under  a  glass  shade,  the 
other  a  basket  of  carnations  and  roses  and  camelias — both 
of  which  masterpieces  my  poor  family,  to  avoid  hurting 


372  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

my  feelings,  had  to  place  in  the  parlour  and  keep  there  I 
blush  to  remember  how  long.  It  must  be  admitted  that 
this  was  scarcely  an  achievement  to  encourage  an  interest 
in  art.  For  the  appreciation  of  art,  as  for  its  practice,  it 
is  important  to  have  nothing  to  unlearn  from  the  begin- 
ning; mine  was  the  sort  of  training  to  reduce  me  to  the 
necessity  of  unlearning  everything;  ahd  most  of  my  con- 
temporaries, on  leaving  school,  were  in  the  same  plight. 

My  eyes  were  no  better  trained  than  my  hands.  Works 
of  art  at  the  Convent  consisted  of  the  usual  holy  statues 
designed  for  our  spiritual,  not  sesthetic  edification;  the 
Stations  of  the  Cross  whose  merit  was  no  less  spiritual; 
two  copies  of  Murillo  and  Rafael  which  my  Father,  in  the 
fervour  of  conversion,  presented  to  the  Mother  Superior; 
and  a  picture  of  St.  Elizabeth  of  Hungary  that  adorned 
the  Convent  parlour,  where  we  all  felt  it  belonged,  such 
a  marvel  to  us  was  its  combination  of  brilliantly-coloured 
needle-and-brush  work. 

Illustrated  books  there  must  have  been  in  the  ill- 
assorted  hodge-podge  of  a  collection  in  the  Library  from 
which  we  obtained  our  reading  for  Thursday  afternoons 
and  Sundays.  But  though  I  doubt  if  there  was  a  book 
I  had  not  sampled,  even  if  I  had  not  been  able  to  read  it 
straight  through,  I  can  recall  no  illustrations  except  the 
designs  by  Rossetti,  Millais,  and  Holman  Hunt,  made 
for  Moxon's  Tennyson  and  reproduced  by  the  Harpers 
for  a  cheap  American  edition  of  the  Poems,  a  copy 
of  which  was  given  to  me  one  year  as  a  prize.     Little 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  373 

barbarian  as  I  was,  I  disliked  the  drawings  of  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites  because  they  mystified  me — the  Lady  of 
Shalott,  entangled  in  her  wide  floating  web,  the  finest 
drawing  Holman  Hunt  ever  made ;  the  company  of  weep- 
ing queens  in  the  Vale  of  Avalon,  in  Rossetti's  harmo- 
niously crowded  design — when  I  flattered  myself  I  under- 
stood everything  that  was  to  be  understood,  more  espe- 
cially Tennyson's  Poems,  many  of  which  I  could  recite 
glibly  from  beginning  to  end — and  did  recite  diligently  to 
myself  at  hours  when  I  ought  to  have  been  busy  with  the 
facts  and  figures  in  the  class  books  before  me.  Most 
people,  young  or  old,  dislike  anything  which  shows  them 
how  much  less  they  understand  than  they  think  they  do. 

Of  the  history  of  art  I  was  left  in  ignorance  as  abject, 
the  next  to  nothing  I  knew  gleaned  from  a  Lives  of  the 
Artists  adapted  to  children,  a  favourite  book  in  the 
Library,  one  providing  me  with  the  theme  for  my  sole 
serious  effort  in  drama — a  three-act  play,  Michael  Angelo 
its  hero,  which,  with  a  success  many  dramatists  might 
envy,  I  wrote,  produced,  acted  in,  and  found  an  audience 
of  good-natured  nuns  for,  all  at  the  ripe  age  of  eleven. 

II 

When  I  left  the  Convent  for  the  holidays  and  eventu- 
ally "  for  good,"  little  in  my  new  surroundings  was  cal- 
culated to  increase  my  knowledge  of  art  or  to  teach  me  the 
first  important  fact,  as  a  step  to  knowledge,  that  I  knew 
absolutely  nothing  on  the  subject.     In  my  Grandfather's 


374  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

house,  art  was  represented  by  the  family  portraits,  the 
engraving  after  Gilbert  Stuart's  Washington,  the  illus- 
trated lamp  shade,  and  the  Rogers  Group.  ]My  Father, 
re-established  in  a  house  of  his  own,  displayed  an  unac- 
countably liberal  taste,  straying  from  the  Philadelphia 
standard  to  the  extent  of  decorating  his  parlour  walls 
with  engravings  of  Napoleon  he  had  picked  up  in  Paris — 
to  one,  printed  in  colour,  attaching  a  value  which  I  doubt 
if  the  facts  would  justify,  though,  as  I  have  never  come 
across  it  in  any  collection,  ISIuseum,  or  Gallery,  it  may  be 
rarer  and,  therefore,  more  valuable,  than  I  think.  Other 
fruits  of  his  old  journeys  to  Paris  were  two  engravings, 
perhaps  after  Guj'^s,  of  two  famous  ladies  of  that  town, 
whose  presence  in  our  prim  and  proper  and  highly  do- 
mestic dining-room  seems  to  me  the  most  incongruous 
accident  in  an  otherwise  correctlj'^-appointed  Philadelphia 
household.  When  I  think  of  Napoleon  replacing  Wash- 
ington on  our  walls,  I  suspect  my  Father  of  having  broken 
loose  from  the  Philadelphia  traces  in  his  youth,  though 
by  the  time  I  knew  him  the  prints  were  the  only  signs  of  a 
momentary  dash  for  freedom  on  the  part  of  so  scrupulous 
a  Philadelphian. 

It  is  curious  that  illustrations  should  have  as  small  a 
place  in  my  memory  of  home  life  as  of  the  Convent.  The 
men  of  the  Golden  Age  of  the  Sixties  had  published  their 
best  work  long  before  I  had  got  through  school,  and  in  my 
childhood  books  gave  me  my  chief  amusement.     But  I 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  375 

remember  nothing  of  their  fine  designs.  The  earlier 
Cruikshank  drawings  for  Dickens  I  knew  well  in  the 
American  edition  which  my  Father  owned,  and  never  so 
long  as  I  live  can  I  see  the  Dickens  world  except  as  it 
is  shown  in  the  much  over-rated  Cruikshank  interpreta- 
tions. Other  memories  are  of  the  highly-finished,  senti- 
mental steel-engravings  of  Scott's  heroines,  including  Meg 
Merrilies,  whom  I  still  so  absurdly  associate  with  Crazy 
Norah.  Another  series  of  portraits,  steel-engravings,  as 
highly-finished  and  but  slightly  less  insipid,  illustrated  my 
Father's  edition  of  Thiers'  French  Revolution  through 
which,  one  conscientious  winter,  I  considered  it  my  duty 
to  wade.  And  I  recall  also  the  large  volumes  of  photo- 
graphs after  Rafael  and  other  masters  that,  in  the 
Eighteen- Seventies,  came  into  fashion  for  Christmas 
presents  and  parlour-table  books,  and  that  I  think  must 
have  heralded  the  new  departure  the  Centennial  is  sup- 
posed to  have  inaugurated. 

If  I  try  to  picture  to  myself  the  interior  of  the  houses 
where  I  used  to  visit,  art  in  them  too  seems  best  repre- 
sented by  family  portraits  no  more  remarkable  than  my 
Grandfather's,  by  the  engraving  of  Stuart's  Washington, 
or  of  Penn  signing  the  Treaty  with  the  Indians,  or  of  the 
American  Army  crossing  the  Delaware,  all  three  part  of 
the  traditional  decoration  of  the  Philadelphia  hall  and 
dining-room,  and  by  a  Rogers  Group  and  an  illustrated 
lamp  shade.     The  library  in  which  a  friend  first  showed 


376  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

me  a  volume  of  Hogarth's  engravings  I  remember  as  ex- 
ceptional. But  I  have  an  idea  that  had  I  possessed  greater 
powers  of  appreciation  then,  I  should  have  a  keener 
memory  now  of  other  houses  full  of  interesting  pictures 
and  prints  and  illustrated  books,  which  I  did  not  see  simply 
because  my  eyes  had  not  been  trained  to  see  them. 

Certainly,  there  were  Philadelphia  collections  of  these 
things  then,  as  there  always  have  been — only  they  were 
not  heard  of  and  talked  about  as  they  are  now,  or,  if  they 
were,  it  was  to  dismiss  their  collecting  as  an  amiable  fad. 
]Mr.  John  S.  Phillips  had  got  together  the  engravings 
which  the  Pennsylvania  Academy  is  to-day  happy  to 
possess.  People  who  were  interested  did  not  have  to  be 
told  that  ]Mr.  Claghorn's  collection  was  perhaps  the  finest 
in  the  country;  J.  was  one  of  the  wise  minority,  and  often 
on  Sundays  took  advantage  of  JNIr.  Claghorn's  generosity 
in  letting  anybody  with  the  intelligence  to  realize  the 
privilege  come  to  look  at  his  prints  and  study  them;  but 
I,  who  had  not  learned  to  be  interested,  knew  nothing  of 
the  collection  until  I  knew  J.  Gebbie  and  Barrie's  store 
flourished  in  Walnut  Street  as  it  hardly  could  had  there 
not  been  people  in  Philadelphia,  as  Gebbie  once  wrote  to 
Frederick  Keppel,  who  collected  "  these  smoky,  poky 
old  prints."  Gebbie  and  Barrie  have  gone,  but  Barrie  re- 
mains, a  publisher  of  art  books,  and  there  are  other  dealers 
no  less  important  and  perhaps  more  enterprising,  who 
prosper,  as  one  of  them  has  recently  assured  me  they  could 
not,  if  they  depended  for  their  chief  support  upon  Phila- 


■*  ^- 


«f» 


//    * 


I', 


t"    /-Jii  *.-;\-#k  *-^^>- 

<is,  w-' ,^'X  A,'^  ift <  *r,  '-•        »l\v-       ' . 


'"  M^:^;-; 


->;■■  ^v-5' 


-:i'*iv. 


GIRARD  COLLEGE 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  379 

delphia.  But  Philadelphia  gives,  as  it  gave,  solid  founda- 
tions of  suj)port,  with  the  difference  that  to-day  it  takes 
good  care  the  world  should  know  it. 

A  few  Philadelphians  collected  pictures.  One  of  the 
show  places,  more  select  and  exclusive  than  the  Mint  and 
Girard  College,  for  the  rare  visitor  to  the  town  with  a  soul 
above  dancing  and  dining,  was  Mr.  Gibson's  gallery  in 
Walnut  Street,  open  on  stated  days  to  anybody  properly 
introduced,  or  it  may  be  that  only  a  visiting  card  with  a 
proper  address  was  necessary  for  admission.  The  less  I 
say  about  the  Gallery  the  better,  for  I  never  went  to  Mr. 
Gibson's  myself,  though  I  knew  the  house  as  I  passed  it  for 
one  apart  in  Philadelphia — one  where  so  un-Philadelphia- 
like  a  possession  as  a  picture  gallery  was  allowed  to  dis- 
turb the  Philadelphian's  first-story  arrangement  of  front 
and  back  parlours.  The  collection  can  now  be  visited, 
without  any  preliminary  formalities,  at  the  Academy  of 
Fine  Arts.  Mrs.  Bloomfield  Moore  was  still  living  in 
Philadelphia  and  she  must  have  begun  collecting  though, 
well  as  I  knew  the  inside  of  her  house  in  my  young  days, 
I  hesitate  to  assert  it  as  a  fact — which  shows  my  unpardon- 
able blindness  to  most  things  in  life  worth  while.  I  never, 
as  far  as  I  remember,  went  anywhere  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  looking  at  paintings.  I  had  not  even  the  curiosity 
which  is  the  next  best  thing  to  knowledge  and  understand- 
ing. I  have  said  how  meagre  are  my  impressions  of  the 
old  Academy  on  Chestnut  Street.  It  is  a  question  to 
me  whether  I  had  ever  seen  more  than  the  outside  of  the 


380  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

new  Academy  at  Broad  and  Cherry  Streets  before  I  met 
J.  To  go  to  the  exhibitions  there  had  not  as  yet  come 
within  the  list  of  things  Philadelphians  who  were  not 
artists  made  a  point  of  doing.  Altogether,  judging  from 
my  own  recollections,  Philadelphians  did  not  bother  about 
art,  and  did  not  stoj)  to  ask  whether  there  was  any  to 
bother  about  in  Philadelphia,  or  not, 

III 

Their  indifference  was  their  loss.  The  art,  with  a 
highly  respectable  pedigree,  was  there  for  Philadelphia  to 
enjoy  and  be  proud  of,  if  Philadelphia  had  not  been  as 
reticent  about  it  as  about  all  its  other  accomplishments 
and  possessions.  I  have  a  decided  suspicion  that  I  have 
come  to  a  subject  about  which  I  might  do  well  to  observe 
the  same  reticence,  not  only  as  a  Philadelphian,  but  as  the 
wife  of  an  artist.  For  if,  as  the  wife  of  a  Friend,  I  have 
learned  that  only  Friends  are  qualified  to  write  of  them- 
selves, as  the  wife  of  an  artist  I  have  reason  to  believe 
it  more  discreet  to  leave  all  talk  of  art  to  artists,  though 
discretion  in  this  regard  has  not  been  one  of  the  virtues 
of  my  working  life.  But  just  now,  I  am  talking  not  so 
much  of  art  as  of  my  attitude  towards  art  which  must  have 
been  the  attitude  of  the  outsider  in  Philadelphia,  or  else  it 
would  not  have  been  mine.  As  for  the  genealogy  of  Phila- 
delphia art,  it  is,  like  the  genealogy  of  Philadelphia 
families,  in  the  records  of  the  town  for  all  who  will  to  read. 

In  the  very  beginning  of  things  Philadelphia  may  have 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  381 

had  no  more  pressing  need  for  the  artist's  studio  than  for 
the  writer's  study.  But  it  was  surprising  how  soon  its 
needs  expanded  in  this  direction.  English  and  other 
European  critics  deplore  the  absence  of  an  original — or 
aboriginal— school  of  art  in  America,  as  if  they  thought 
the  American  artist  should  vmconsciously  have  lost,  on  his 
way  across  the  Atlantic,  that  inheritance  from  centuries 
of  civilization  and  tradition  which  the  modern  artist  who 
calls  himself  Post-Impressionist  is  deliberately  endeavor- 
ing to  get  rid  of,  and  on  his  arrival  have  started  all  over 
again  like  a  child  with  a  clean  slate.  Only  an  American 
art  based  on  the  hieroglyphics  and  war  paint  of  the 
Indians  would  satisfy  the  critic  with  this  preconceived 
idea.  But  the  first  American  artists  were  not  savages, 
they  were  not  primitives.  They  did  not  paint  pictures 
like  Indians  any  more  than  the  first  American  architects 
built  wigwams  like  Indians,  or  the  first  American  Colo- 
nials dressed  themselves  in  beads  and  feathers  like 
Indians.  Colonials  had  come  from  countries  where  art 
was  highly  developed,  and  they  could  no  more  forget 
the  masters  at  home  than  they  could  forget  the  literature 
upon  which  they  and  their  fathers  had  been  nourished. 
If  years  passed  before  a  Philadelphian  began  to  paint 
pictures,  it  was  because  Philadelphians  had  not  time  to 
paint  as  they  had  not  time  to  write.  The  wonder  really 
is  that  they  began  so  soon — that  so  soon  the  artist  got 
to  work,  and  so  soon  there  was  a  public  to  care  enough 
for  his  work  to  enable  him  to  do  it. 


382  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

In  a  thousand  ways  the  interest  of  Philadelphians 
in  art  expressed  itself.  It  is  written  large  in  the  beauty 
of  their  houses  and  in  their  readiness  to  introduce  orna- 
ment where  ornament  belonged.  The  vine  and  cluster 
Qf  grapes  carved  on  William  Penn's  front  door;  the 
panelling  and  woodwork  in  Colonial  houses;  the  decora- 
tion of  a  public  building  like  the  State  House;  the 
furniture,  the  silver,  the  china,  we  pay  small  fortunes 
for  when  we  can  find  them  and  have  not  inherited  them; 
the  single  finely-proportioned  mirror  or  decorative  sil- 
houette on  a  white  wall;  the  Colonial  rooms  that  have 
come  down  to  us  untouched,  perfect  in  their  simplicity,  not 
an  ornament  too  many; — all  show  which  way  the  wind  of 
art  blew. 

There  was  hardly  one  of  the  great  men  from  any 
American  town,  makers  of  first  the  Revolution  and  then 
the  Union,  who  did  not  appreciate  the  meaning  and  im- 
portance of  art  and  did  not  leave  a  written  record,  if  only 
in  a  letter,  of  his  appreciation.  Few  things  have  struck 
me  more  in  reading  the  Correspondence  and  Memoirs  and 
Diaries  of  the  day.  But  these  men  were  not  only 
patriots,  they  were  men  of  intelligence,  and  they  knew 
the  folly  of  expecting  to  find  in  Philadelphia  or  New 
York  or  Boston  the  same  beautiful  things  that  in  Paris 
or  London  or  Italy  filled  them  with  delight  and  admira- 
tion, or  of  seeing  in  this  fact  a  reason  to  lower  their 
standard.  The  critics  who  are  shocked  because  we  have 
no  aboriginal  school  might  do  worse  than  read  some  of 


."^^liv"  -- 


-'/ 


UPSALA,  GERMANTOWN 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  385 

these  old  documents.  I  recommend  in  particular  a 
passage  in  a  letter  John  Adams  wrote  to  his  wife  from 
Paris.  It  impressed  me  so  when  I  came  upon  it,  it 
seemed  to  me  such  an  admirable  explanation  of  a  situa- 
tion j)erplexing  to  critics,  that  I  copied  it  in  my  note- 
book, and  I  cannot  resist  quoting  it  now, 

"  It  is  not  indeed  the  fine  arts  which  our  country 
requires,"  he  writes,  "  the  useful,  the  mechanic  arts  are 
those  which  we  have  occasion  for  in  a  young  country  as 
yet  simple  and  not  far  advanced  in  luxury,  although 
much  too  far  for  her  age  and  character.  .  .  .  The  science 
of  government  it  is  my  duty  to  study,  more  than  all  other 
sciences;  the  arts  of  legislation  and  administration  and 
negotiation  ought  to  take  place  of,  indeed  to  exclude, 
in  a  manner,  all  otlier  arts.  I  must  study  politics  and 
war,  that  my  sons  may  have  liberty  to  study  mathematics 
and  philosophy.  My  sons  ought  to  study  mathematics 
and  philosojjhy,  geograjjhy,  natural  history  and  naval 
architecture,  navigation,  commerce  and  agi-iculture,  in 
order  to  give  their  children  a  right  to  study  painting, 
poetry,  music,  architecture,  statuary,  tapestry,  and 
porcelain." 

John  Adams  and  his  contemporaries  may  not  have  had 
American  grandfathers  with  the  leisure  to  earn  for  them 
the  right  to  study  art,  but  they  did  not  ignore  it.  All  the 
time  they  felt  its  appeal  and  responded  to  the  appeal  as 
well  as  busy  men,  absorbed  in  the  development  of  a  new 
country,  could.     They  got  themselves  painted  whenever 

25 


386  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

they  happened  to  combine  the  leisure  to  sit  and  a  painter 
to  sit  to.  When  a  statesman  like  Jefferson,  who  con- 
fessed himself  "  an  enthusiast  on  the  subject  of  the  arts," 
was  sent  abroad,  he  devoted  his  scant  leisure  to  securing  the 
best  possible  sculptor  for  the  statue  of  Washington,  or  the 
best  possible  models  for  public  buildings  at  home.  Much 
that  we  now  prize  in  architecture  and  design  we  owe  to 
the  men  who  supposed  themselves  too  occupied  with 
politics  and  war  to  encourage  art  and  artists.  They  were 
not  too  busy  to  provide  the  beauty  without  which  liberty 
would  have  been  a  poor  affair — not  too  busy  to  welcome 
the  first  Americans  who  saw  to  it  that  all  the  beauty 
should  not  be  imported  from  Europe.  "  After  the  first 
cares  for  the  necessaries  of  life  are  over,  we  shall  come  to 
think  of  the  embellislmients,"  Franklin  wrote  to  his  Lon- 
don landlady's  daughter.  "  Already  some  of  our  young 
geniuses  begin  to  lisp  attempts  at  painting,  poetry  and 
music.  We  have  a  young  painter  now  studying  at  Rome." 
In  this  care  for  the  embellishments  of  life,  of  so  much 
more  real  importance  than  the  necessaries,  Philadelphia 
was  the  first  town  to  take  the  lead,  though  Philadelphians 
have  since  gone  out  of  their  way  to  forget  it.  The  old 
Quaker  lady  in  her  beautiful  dress,  preserving  her  beauti- 
ful repose,  in  her  beautiful  old  and  historic  rooms,  shows 
the  Friends'  instinctive  love  of  beauty  even  if  they  never 
intentionally,  or  deliberately,  undertook  to  create  it.  For 
the  most  beautiful  of  what  we  now  call  Colonial  furniture 
produced  in  the  Colonies,  Philadelphia  is  given  the  credit 


-^'■*-''  ,§£  -"■aSC:,  -J-v 


sr^^i^.. 


'^H'r'^nr    im    iiii 'niiniTr'r"" '  r-T-ni  -  i-njuiiiiini  liniiin   '» "nmfcn  lagpi" 

ir'''>^>^...':'  .Bill-  Ur1,t%;;:!il.W^     '""■•■*'^ 


ii«i  t  mm ti^iixuL 


THE  HALL  AT  CLIVEDEN,  THE  CHEW  HOUSE 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  389 

by  authorities  on  the  subject.  Franklin's  letters  could 
also  be  quoted  to  show  Philadelphians'  keenness  to  have 
their  portraits  done  in  "  conversation "  or  "  family " 
pieces,  or  alone  in  miniatures,  whichever  were  most  in 
vogue.  Even  Friends,  before  Franklin,  when  they  visited 
England  sought  out  a  fashionable  portrait-painter  like 
Kneller  because  he  was  supposed  the  best.  Artists  from 
England  came  to  Philadelphia  for  commissions,  artists 
from  other  Colonies  drifted  there, — ^Peale,  Stuart,  Cop- 
ley. Philadelphia,  in  return,  spared  its  artists  to  Eng- 
land, and  the  Royal  Academy  was  forced  to  rely  upon 
Philadelphia  for  its  second  President — Benjamin  West. 
The  artist's  studio  in  Philadelphia  had  become  a  place  of 
such  distinction  by  the  Revolution  that  members  of  the 
first  Congress  felt  honoured  themselves  when  allowed 
to  honour  it  with  their  presence — in  the  intervals  between 
legislating  and  dining.  The  Philadelphian  to-day,  goaded 
by  the  moss-grown  jest  over  Philadelphia  slowness  and 
want  of  enterprise  into  giving  the  list  of  Philadelphia 
"  firsts,"  or  the  things  Philadelphia  has  been  the  first  to 
do  in  the  country,  can  include  among  them  the  picture 
exhibition  which  Philadelphia  was  the  first  to  hold,  and 
the  Pennsylvania  Academy  which  was  the  first  Academy 
of  the  Fine  Arts  instituted  in  America.  Philadelphia  was 
the  richest  American  town  and  long  the  Capital;  the 
marvel  would  be  if  it  had  not  taken  the  lead  in  art  as  in 
politics. 


CHAPTER  XV:  PHILADELPHIA 
AND  ART— CONTINUED 

I 

BY  the  time  I  grew  up  years  had  passed  since 
Philadelphia  had  ceased  to  oe  the  Capital,  and 
during  these  years  its  atmosphere  had  not  been 
especially  congenial  to  art.  But  the  general  conditions 
had  not  been  more  stimulating  anywhere  in  America. 
The  Hudson  River  School  is  about  all  that  came  of  a 
period  which,  for  that  matter,  owed  its  chief  good  to 
revolt  in  countries  where  more  was  to  be  expected  of 
it:  in  France,  to  first  the  Romanticists  and  then  the 
Impressionists  who  had  revolted  against  the  Academic; 
in  England  to  the  Pre-Raphaelites  who,  with  noisy  adver- 
tisement, broke  away  from  Victorian  convention.  Art  in 
America  had  not  got  to  the  point  of  development  when 
there  was  anything  to  revolt  against  or  to  break  away 
from.  What  it  needed  was  a  revival  of  the  old  interest, 
a  reaction  from  the  prevailing  indifference  to  all  there 
was  of  art  in  the  country. 

Some  say  this  came  in  Philadelphia  with  the  Cen- 
tennial. The  Centennial's  stirring  up,  however,  would  not 
have  done  much  good  had  not  artists  already  begun  to  stir 
themselves  up.  How  a  number  of  Americans  who  had 
been  studying  in  Paris  and  jNIunich  returned  to  America 
full  of  youth  and  enthusiasm  in  the  early  Eighteen-Seven- 

390 


THE  OLD  WATER-WORKS,  FAIRMOUNT  PARK 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  393 

ties,  there  to  lead  a  new  movement  in  American  art,  has 
long  since  passed  into  history — also  the  fact  that  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  outcomes  of  this  new  movement  was 
the  new  school  of  illustration  that  quickly  made  American 
illustrated  books  and  magazines  famous  throughout  the 
world.  But  what  concerns  me  as  a  Philadelphian  is  that, 
once  more  at  this  critical  moment,  Philadelphia  took  the 
lead.  The  publishers  of  the  illustrated  books  and  maga- 
zines may  have  been  chiefly  in  New  York,  the  illustrations 
were  chiefly  from  Philadelphia,  and  there  is  no  reason 
why  Philadelphia  should  not  admit  it  with  decent  pride. 
Abbey  and  Frost  were  actually,  Howard  Pyle  and  Smed- 
ley  virtually,  Philadelphians.  Blum  and  Brennan  passed 
through  the  Academy  Schools.  J.,  when  I  met  him,  was 
at  the  threshold  of  his  career.  And  the  illustrators  were 
but  a  younger  offshoot  of  the  new  Philadelphia  group. 
Miss  JNIary  Cassatt  had  already  started  to  work  in  Paris, 
where  Jules  Stewart  and  Ridgway  Knight  represented 
the  older  Philadelphia  school ;  Mrs.  Anna  Lea  JNIerritt  was 
already  in  London;  J.  McLiu'e  Hamilton  had  finished  his 
studies  at  Antwerp;  Alexander  and  Birge  Harrison  had 
been  heard  of  in  Paris  where  Sargent — who  belongs  to 
Philadelphia  if  to  any  American  town — had  carried  off  his 
first  honours.  At  home  Richards  was  painting  his  marines ; 
Poore  had  begun  his  study  of  animals ;  Dana,  I  think,  was 
beginning  his  water-colours;  William  Sartain  had  long 
been  known  as  an  engraver;  INIiss  Emily  Sartain  was  an 
art  editor  and  soon  to  be  the  head  of  an  art  school;  the 


394  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Moran  family,  with  the  second  generation,  had  become 
almost  a  Philadelphia  institution;  from  Stephen  Ferris 
J.  could  learn  the  technic  of  etching  as  from  the  Claghorn 
collection  he  could  trace  its  development  through  the 
ages;  and  of  the  younger  men  and  women,  his  con- 
temporaries, he  did  not  leave  me  long  in  ignorance. 

]My  own  work  had  led  me  to  the  discovery  of  so  many 
worlds  of  work  in  Philadelphia,  I  could  not  have  believed 
there  was  room  for  another.  But  there  was,  and  the  artists' 
world  was  so  industrious,  so  full  of  energy,  so  sufficient 
unto  itself,  so  absorbed  in  itself,  that,  with  the  first  glimpse 
into  it,  the  difficulty  was  to  believe  space  and  reason  could 
be  left  for  any  outside  of  it.  This  new  experience  was  as 
extraordinary  a  revelation  as  my  initiation  into  the  news- 
-  paper  world.  I  had  been  living,  without  suspecting  it, 
next  door  to  people  who  thought  of  nothing,  talked  of 
nothing,  occupied  themselves  with  nothing,  but  art :  people 
for  whom  a  whole  armj^  of  men  and  women  were  busily 
employed,  managing  schools,  running  factories,  keeping 
stores,  putting  up  buildings — delightful  people  with  whom 
I  could  not  be  two  minutes  without  reproaching  myself 
for  not  having  known  from  the  cradle  that  nothing  in  life 
save  art  ever  did  count,  or  ever  could.  And  at  this  point 
I  can  afford  to  get  rid  of  Philadelphia  reticence  with- 
out scruple  since  through  this,  to  me,  new  world  of  work 
I  had  the  benefit  of  J.'s  guidance. 

It  was  a  moment  when  it  had  got  to  be  the  fashion 
for  artists  in  all  the  studios  in  the  same  building  to  give 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  395 

receptions  on  the  same  day,  and  I  learned  that  J.'s,  so 
strange  to  me  at  first,  was  only  one  of  an  endless  number. 
For  part  of  my  new  experience  was  the  round  of  the 
studios  on  the  appointed  day,  when  I  was  too  oppressed 
by  my  ignorance  and  my  desire  not  to  expose  it  and  my 
uncertainty  as  to  what  was  the  right  thing  to  say  in  front 
of  a  picture,  that  I  do  not  remember  much  besides,  except 
the  miniatures  of  Miss  Van  Tromp  and  the  marines  of 
Prosper  Senat,  and  why  they  should  now  stand  out  from 
the  confused  jumble  of  my  memories  I  am  sure  I  cannot 
see. 

Then  J.  took  me  to  the  Academy  of  Fine  Arts  and  it 
was  revealed  to  me  as  a  place  not  to  pass  by  but  to  go 
inside  of:  artists  from  all  over  the  country  struggling  to 
get  in  for  its  annual  exhibition  of  paintings  which  already 
had  a  reputation  as  one  of  the  finest  given  in  the  country ; 
artists  from  all  over  the  world  drawn  in  for  its  inter- 
national exhibitions  of  etchings — Whistler,  Seymour 
Haden,  Appian,  Lalanne,  a  catalogue-full  of  etchers  intro- 
duced for  the  first  time  to  my  uneducated  eyes;  everybody 
who  could  crowding  in  on  Thursday  afternoons  to  sit  on 
the  stairs  and  listen  to  the  music,  while  I  upbraided  myself 
for  not  having  known  ages  ago  what  delightful  things 
there  were  to  do,  instead  of  letting  my  time  hang  heavy 
on  my  hands,  in  Philadelphia. 

J.  had  me  invited  to  more  private  evenings  and  re- 
unions of  societies  of  artists,  and  I  remember — if  they  do 
not — meeting  many  who  were  at  the  very  heart  of  the 


396  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

machinery  that  made  the  wheels  of  the  new  movement  go 
round: — Mr.  Leslie  Miller,  the  director  of  the  School  of 
Industrial  Art  from  which  promising  students  were 
emerging  or  had  emerged;  Stephen  Parrish  and  Blanche 
Dillaye  and  Gabrielle  Clements,  whose  etchings  were 
with  the  Whistlers  and  the  Seymour  Hadens  in  the  inter- 
national exhibitions ;  Alice  Barber  full  of  commissions  from 
magazines;  ^Margaret  Leslie  and  Mary  Trotter  in  their 
fervent  apprenticeship;  Boyle  and  Stephens  the  sculptors; 
Colin  Cooper  and  Stephens  the  painters.  What  a  rank 
outsider  I  felt  in  their  company!  And  how  grateful  I 
was  for  my  talent  as  a  listener  that  helped  to  save  me 
from  exposure ! 

II 

I  saw  another  side  of  the  revival  at  my  Uncle's  Indus- 
trial Art  School  in  the  eagerness  of  teachers  and  pupils 
both  to  know  and  to  learn  and  to  practise — an  eagerness 
that  had,  I  fear,  an  eye  to  ultimate  profit.  That  was  the 
worst  feature  of  the  booming  of  art  in  the  Eighteen- 
Eighties.  Gain  was  the  incentive  that  drove  too  many 
students  to  the  art  schools  of  Philadelphia  as  to  those  of 
Paris,  or  London,  and  set  countless  amateurs  in  their  own 
homes  to  hammering  brass  and  carving  wood  and  stamp- 
ing leather.  Art  was  to  them  an  investment,  a  speculation, 
a  gentlemanly — or  ladylike — way  of  making  a  fortune. 
An  English  painter  I  know  told  me  a  few  years  since  that 
he  had  put  quite  six  thousand  pounds  into  art,  what  with 
studying  and  travelling  for  subjects,  and  he  thought  he 


^^^^ 


THE  STAIRWAY,  STATE  HOUSE 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  399 

had  a  right  to  look  for  a  decent  return  on  his  money.  That 
expresses  the  attitude  of  a  vast  number  of  Philadelphians 
in  their  new  active  enthusiasm.  However  trumpery  the 
amount  of  labour  they  invested,  they  counted  on  it  to 
bring  them  in  a  big  dividend  in  dollars  and  cents. 

I  am  afraid  my  Uncle,  without  meaning  to,  encouraged 
this  spirit,  when  he  started  not  only  the  Industrial  Art 
School,  but  the  Decorative  Art  Club  in  Pine  Street.  He 
was  an  optimist  and  saw  only  the  beautiful  side  of  anything 
he  was  interested  in.  To  please  him  I  was  made  the  Treas- 
urer of  the  Club.  The  Committee  sympathised  with  my 
Uncle  and  worked  for  the  ultimate  good  he  thought  the 
Club  was  to  accomplish  in  Philadelphia.  Mrs.  Harrison, 
Mrs.  Mifflin,  Mrs.  Pepper,  Miss  Julia  Biddle  with  whom  I 
served,  agreed  with  him  that  women  who  had  some  training 
in  art  would  understand  better  the  meaning  of  art  and  the 
pleasure  of  the  stimulus  this  understanding  could  give. 
My  Uncle,  however,  always  ready  to  do  anybody  a  good 
turn,  went  further  and  was  anxious  that  provision  should 
also  be  made  to  sell  the  work  done  in  the  Club,  which  in 
this  way  would  be  open  to  many  who  could  not  otherwise 
afford  it.  I  fancy  that  this  provision,  if  not  the  success  of 
the  Club,  was  one  of  its  chief  attractions.  The  amateur 
is  apt  to  believe  she  can  romp  in  gaily  and  snatch  what- 
ever prizes  are  going  by  playing  with  the  art  which  is  the 
life's  work,  mastered  by  toil  and  travail,  of  the  artist. 

I  criticise  now,  but  in  my  new  ardour  I  saw  nothing 
to  criticise.    On  the  contrary,  I  saw  perfection :  artists  and 


400  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

students  encouraged,  occupations  and  interests  lavished 
upon  amateurs  whose  lives  had  been  as  empty  as  mine; 
and  I  worked  myself  up  into  a  fine  enthusiasm  of  belief 
in  art  as  a  new  force,  or  one  that  if  it  had  always  existed 
had  been  waiting  for  its  prophet, — just  as  electricity  had 
waited  for  Franklin  to  caj^ture  and  apply  it  to  human 
needs.  I  went  so  far  in  my  exaltation  as  to  write  an  in- 
spired— or  so  it  seemed  to  me — article  on  Art  as  the  New 
Religion,  proving  that  the  old  religions  having  perished 
and  the  old  gods  fallen,  art  had  re-arisen  in  its  splendour 
and  glory  to  provide  a  new  gospel,  a  new  god,  to  take 
their  place,  and  I  filled  my  essay  with  ingenious  argu- 
ments, and  liberal  quotations  from  William  jNI orris  and 
Ruskin,  and  rhetorical  flights  of  prophecy.  I  had  not 
given  the  last  finishing  and  convincing  touches  to  my  ex- 
position of  the  new  gospel  when,  with  my  marriage,  came 
other  work  more  urgent,  and  I  was  spared  the  humiliation 
of  seeing  my  Palace  of  Art  collapse,  like  the  house  built 
on  sand,  while  I  still  believed  in  it.  In  the  years  that 
foUow^ed  I  got  to  know  most  of  the  galleries  and  exhibi- 
tions of  Europe ;  despite  my  scruples  I  made  a  profession 
of  writing  about  art ;  and  the  education  this  meant  taught 
me,  among  other  things,  the  simple  truth  that  art  is  art, 
and  not  religion.  But  I  cannot  laugh  at  the  old  folly 
of  my  ignorance.  The  enthusiasm,  the  mood,  out  of  which 
the  article  grew,  was  better,  healthier,  than  the  apathy 
that  had  saved  me  from  being  ridiculous  because  it  risked 
nothing. 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  401 

III 

These  years  away  from  home  were  spent  largely  in 
the  company  of  artists  and  were  filled  with  the  talk  of  art ; 
what  had  been  marvels  to  me  in  Philadelphia  became 
the  commonplaces  of  every  day.  But  I  was  all  the  time 
in  Italy,  or  France,  or  England,  and  could  not  realize 
the  extent  to  which,  for  Philadelphians  who  had  not 
Meandered,  artists  and  art  were  also  becoming  more  and 
more  a  part  of  everyday  life.  I  did  not  see  Philadelphia 
in  the  changing,  not  until  it  had  changed,  and  possibly  I 
feel  the  change  more  than  those  who  lived  through  it.  It 
is  not  so  much  in  the  things  done,  in  actual  accomplish- 
ment, that  I  am  conscious  of  it,  as  in  the  new  concern  for 
art,  the  new  attentions  heaped  upon  it,  the  new  deference 
to  it.  Art  is  in  the  air — "  on  the  town,"  a  subject  of 
polite  conversation,  a  topic  for  the  drawing-room. 

When  I  first  came  out,  art  had  never  supplied  small 
talk  in  society,  never  filled  up  a  gap  at  a  dull  dinner  or 
reception.  We  should  have  been  disgracefully  behind  the 
times  if  we  could  not  chatter  about  Christine  Nilsson  and 
Campanini  and  the  last  opera,  or  Irving  and  Ellen  Terry 
and  their  interpretation  of  Shakespeare;  if  we  had  not 
kept  up  with  Trollope  and  George  Eliot,  and  read  the 
latest  Howells  and  Henry  James,  and  raved  over  the 
Rubaiyat.  But  we  might  have  had  the  brand-newest 
biographical  dictionary  of  artists  at  our  fingers'  ends — 
as  we  had  not — and  there  would  have  been  no  occasion  to 

26 


402  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

use  our  information.  Nobody  sparkled  by  sprinkling  his 
talk  with  the  names  of  artists  and  sculptors,  nobody  asked 
what  was  in  the  last  Academy  or  who  had  won  the  gold 
medal  in  Paris,  nobody  discussed  the  psychology  or  the 
meaning  of  the  picture  of  the  year.  I  remember  think- 
ing I  was  doing  something  rather  pretentious  and  pedantic 
when  I  began  to  read  Ruskin.  I  remember  how  a  friend 
who  was  a  tireless  student  of  Kiigler  and  Crowe  and 
Cavalcaselle,  as  a  preparation  to  the  journey  to  Europe 
that  might  never  come  off,  was  looked  upon  as  a  sort  of 
prodigy — a  Philadeljjhia  phenomenon.  But  to-day  I  am 
sure  there  is  not  the  name  of  an  artist,  from  Cimabue  and 
Oiotto  to  Matisse  and  Picasso,  that  does  not  go  easily 
round  the  table  at  any  Philadelphia  dinner;  not  a  writer 
on  art,  from  Lionardo  to  Nordau,  who  cannot  fill  up 
awkward  pauses  at  an  afternoon  crush;  not  one  of  the 
learned  women  of  Philadelphia  who  could  not  tell  you 
where  every  masterpiece  in  the  world  hangs  and  just  what 
her  emotions  before  it  should  be,  who  could  not  play  the 
game  of  attributions  as  gracefully  as  the  game  of  bridge, 
who  could  not  dispose  of  the  most  abstruse  points  in  art 
as  serenely  as  she  settles  the  simplest  squabble  in  the 
nursery. 

The  Academy  is  no  longer  abandoned  in  the  wilderness 
of  Broad  and  Cherry  Streets;  its  receptions  and  private 
views  are  social  functions,  its  exhibitions  are  events  of 
importance,  the  best  given  in  Philadelphia  and  through- 
out the  land,  its  collections  are  the  pride  of  the  wealthy 


UPPER  ROOM,  STENTON 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  405 

Philadelphians  who  contribute  to  them,  its  schools  are 
stifled  with  scholarships. 

The  other  Art  Schools  have  midtiplied,  not  faster, 
however,  than  the  students  whose  legions  account  for,  if 
they  do  not  warrant,  the  existence  not  of  the  Academy 
Schools  alone,  but  of  the  School  of  Industrial  Art,  the 
Drexel  Institute,  the  Woman's  School  of  Design,  the 
Uncle's  old  little  experiment  enlarged  into  a  large  Public 
Industrial  Art  School  where,  I  am  told,  the  Founder  is 
comfortably  forgotten — of  more  institutes,  schools,  classes 
than  I  probably  have  heard  of. 

The  Art  Galleries  have  multiplied:  there  is  some  reason 
for  JNIemorial  Hall  now  that  the  Wilstach  Collection  is 
housed  there,  and  the  Yellow  Buskin,  one  of  the  finest 
Whistlers,  hangs  on  its  walls,  now  that  the  collections  of 
decorative  art  are  being  added  to  by  IVIrs.  John  Harrison 
and  other  Philadelphians  who  are  ambitious  for  their  town 
and  its  supremacy  in  all  things.  Nor  does  this  Philadel- 
phia ambition  soar  to  loftier  heights  than  in  the  project 
for  the  new  Parkway  from  the  City  Hall  with  a  new  Art 
Gallery — the  centre  of  a  sort  of  University  of  Art  if  I 
can  rely  upon  the  plans — to  crown  the  Park  end  of  this 
splendid  (partially  still  on  paper)  avenue,  as  the  Arc  de 
Triomphe  crowns  the  western  end  of  the  Avenue  of  the 
Champs-Elysees. 

The  collectors  multiply,  their  aims,  purse,  field  of  re- 
search, all  expanding;  their  shyness  on  the  subject  sur- 
mounted; Old  Masters  for  whom  Europe  now  weeps  mak- 


406  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

ing  their  triumphant  entry  into  Philadelphia;  the  highest 
price,  that  test  of  the  modern  patron,  paid  for  a  Rem- 
brandt in  Philadelphia;  the  collections  of  JNIr.  Johnson 
and  Mr.  ^¥idener  and  INIr.  Elkins  and  Mr.  Thomas  in 
Philadelphia  as  well  known  by  the  authorities  as  the 
Borghesi  collection  in  Rome  or  the  Duke  of  Westminster's 
in  London. 

The  social  life  of  art  grows  and  can  afford  the  large 
luxurious  Club  in  South  Broad  Street,  artists  and  their 
friends  amply  supporting  it.  And  the  old  Sketch  Club, 
once  glad  of  the  shelter  of  a  room  or  so,  has  blossomed 
forth  in  a  house  of  its  own  in  the  flourishing  "  Little  Street 
of  Clubs,"  with  the  Woman's  Plastic  Club  close  by. 

The  artists  only,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  have  not  multi- 
plied and  grown  in  proportion.  But  the  artist  somehow 
appears  to  be  the  last  consideration  of  those  who  think  they 
are  encouraging  art.  Still  there  are  new  names  for  my 
old  list:  Henry  Thouron,  Violet  Oakley,  Maxfield  Par- 
rish,  now  ranked  with  the  decorative  painters — and,  I 
might  just  point  out  in  passing,  it  is  to  Philadelphia  that 
Boston,  Harrisburg,  and  at  times  New  York  must  send 
for  their  decorators,  whose  work  I  have  not  seen  in  place 
to  express  an  opinion  on  it  one  way  or  the  other.  Cecilia 
Beaux  and  Adolphe  Borie  now  figure  with  the  portrait 
painters;  Waugh  and  Fromuth  with  the  marine  painters, 
who  include  also  Stokes,  the  chronicler  of  Arctic  splen- 
dors of  sea  and  sky,  and  Edward  Stratton  Holloway,  the 
making  of  beautiful  books  claiming  his  interest  no  less 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  407 

than  the  sea ;  Glackens,  Thornton  Oakley,  EHzabeth  Ship- 
pen  Green,  Jessie  Wilcox  Smith  with  the  illustrators; 
McCarter,  Redfield  with  the  group  gathered  about  the 
Academy;  Grafly  with  the  sculptors;  Clifford  Addams, 
Daniel  Garber  with  the  winners  of  scholarships.  Archi- 
tects have  not  lagged  behind  in  the  race — after  the  Furness 
period,  a  Cope  and  Stewardson  period,  a  Wilson  Eyre 
period,  to-day  a  Zantzinger,  Borie,  Medary,  Day,  Page, 
Trumbauer,  and  a  dozen  more  periods  each  progressing 
in  the  right  direction;  with  young  men  from  the  Beaux- 
Arts  and  young  men  from  the  University  School,  eager 
to  tackle  the  ever-increasing  architectural  commissions  in 
a  town  growing  and  re-fashioning  itself  faster  than  any 
mushroom  upstart  of  the  West,  to  inaugurate  a  period  of 
their  own. 

IV 

I  am  not  a  fighter  by  nature,  I  set  a  higher  value  on 
peace  as  I  grow  older,  and  I  look  to  ending  my  days  in 
Philadelphia.  Therefore  I  chronicle  the  change;  I  do  not 
criticise  it.  But  a  few  comments  I  may  permit  myself  and 
yet  hope  that  Philadelphia  will  not  bear  me  in  return  the 
malice  I  could  so  ill  endiu'e.  I  think  the  gain  to  Philadel- 
phia from  this  new  interest  has,  in  many  ways,  been  great. 
If  art  is  the  one  thing  that  lives  through  the  ages — art 
whether  expressed  in  words,  or  paint,  or  bricks  and  mortar, 
or  the  rhythm  of  sound, — it  follows  that  the  pleasvire  it 
gives — when  genuine — is  the  most  enduring.     This  is  a 


408  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

distinct,  if  perhaps  at  the  moment  negative,  gain.  A  more 
visible  gain  I  think  comes  from  the  new  desire,  the  new 
determination  to  care  for  the  right  thing:  a  fashion  due 
perhaps  to  the  insatiable  American  craving  for  "  culture," 
and  at  times  guilty  of  unintelligent  excesses,  but  pleasanter 
in  results  than  the  old  crazes  that  filled  Philadelphia  draw- 
ing-rooms with  spinning  wheels  and  cat's  tails  and  JNIorris 
medisevalism, — if  they  brought  Art  Nouveau  in  their 
train,  thank  fortune  it  has  left  no  traces  of  its  passing;  a 
fashion  more  dignified  in  results  than  the  old  standards 
that  filled  Philadelphia  streets  with  flights  of  originality, 
and  green  stone  monsters,  and  the  deplorable  Philadel- 
phia brand  of  Gothic  and  Renaissance,  Romanesque  and 
Venetian,  Tudor  and  everything  except  the  architecture 
that  belongs  by  right  and  tradition  in  Penn's  beautiful 
town. 

But  interest  in  art  does  not  create  art,  and  when 
Philadelphia  believes  in  this  interest  as  a  creator,  Phila- 
delphia falls  into  a  mistake  that  it  has  not  even  the  merit 
of  having  originated.  I  have  watched  for  many  years  the 
attempts  to  make  art  grow,  to  force  it  like  a  hot-house 
plant.  The  same  thing  is  going  on  everywhere.  In  Eng- 
land, South  Kensington  for  more  than  half  a  century 
has  had  its  schools  in  all  parts  of  the  kingdom,  the  County 
Council  has  added  to  them,  the  City  Corporation  and  the 
City  Guilds  have  followed  suit,  artists  open  private  classes, 
exhibitions  have  increased  in  number  until  they  are  a  drug 
on   the   market,   art   critics   flourish,   the   papers   devote 


WYCK 

The  doorway  from  within 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  ART  411 

columns  to  their  platitudes.  And  what  has  England  to 
show  as  the  outcome  of  all  this  care  ?  Go  look  at  the  deco- 
rations in  the  Royal  Exchange  and  the  pictures  in  the 
Royal  Academy,  examine  the  official  records  and  learn 
how  great  is  the  yearly  output  of  art  teachers  in  excess  of 
schools  for  them  to  teach  in,  and  you  will  have  a  good 
idea  of  the  return  made  on  the  money  and  time  and  red 
tape  lavished  upon  the  teaching  of  art.  It  is  no  better  in 
Paris.  Schools  and  students  were  never  so  many,  for- 
eigners arrive  in  such  numbers  that  they  are  pushing  the 
Frenchman  out  of  his  own  Latin  Quarter,  American  stu- 
dents swagger,  play  the  prince  on  scholarships,  are  pre- 
sented with  clubs  and  homes  where  they  can  give  after- 
noon teas  and  keep  on  living  in  a  little  America  of  their 
own.  And  what  comes  of  it?  Were  the  two  Salons,  with 
the  Salon  des  Independants  and  the  Salon  d'Automne 
thrown  in,  ever  before  such  a  weariness  to  the  flesh? — was 
mediocrity  ever  before  such  an  invitation  to  the  poseur 
and  the  crank  to  pass  off  manufactured  eccentricity  as 
genius  ? 

It  would  not  be  reasonable  to  expect  more  of  Phila- 
delphia than  of  London  and  Paris.  I  cannot  see  that  finer 
artists  liave  been  bred  there  on  the  luxury  of  scholarships 
and  schools  than  on  their  own  efforts  when  they  toiled  all 
day  to  be  able  to  study  at  night,  when  success  was  theirs 
only  after  a  hard  fight.  The  Old  JSIasters  got  their  train- 
ing as  apprentices,  not  as  pampered  youths  luxuriating 
in  fine  schools  and   exhibitions   and  incomes  and  every 


412 


OUR  PHILADELPHIA 


luxury;  they  were  patronized  and  more  splendidly  than 
any  artists  to-day,  but  not  until  they  had  shown  reason  for 
it,  not  until  it  was  an  honour  to  patronize  them.  The  new 
system  is  more  comfortable,  I  admit,  but  great  work  does 
not  spring  from  comfort.  Philadelphia  is  wise  to  set  up  a 
high  standard,  but  not  wise  when  it  makes  the  wav  too 
easy.  For  art  is  a  stern  master.  It  cares  not  if  the  weak 
fall  by  the  roadside,  so  long  as  the  strong,  unhampered, 
succeed  in  getting  into  their  own.  The  best  thing  that 
has  been  done  at  the  Academy  for  many  a  day  is  the  re- 
ducing of  the  scholarships  from  a  two,  or  three,  years' 
interval  free  of  responsibility,  to  a  summer's  holiday 
among  the  masterpieces  of  Europe,  which,  I  am  told,  is 
all  thev  are  now. 


♦ 


CHAPTER  XVI:  PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE 

I 

IF  interest  in  the  art  of  eating  called  for  justification, 
I  could  show  that  I  come  by  mine  legitimately.  My 
family  took  care  of  that  when  the  sensible  ancestor 
who  made  me  an  American  settled  in  Accomac,  where 
most  things  worth  eating  were  to  be  had  for  the  fishing 
or  the  shooting  or  the  digging,  so  that  Accomac  feasted 
while  the  rest  of  Virginia  still  starved,  and  when  my 
Grandfather,  in  his  day,  moved  to  Philadelphia  which  is 
as  well  provided  as  Accomac  and  more  conscientious  in 
cultivating  its  possibilities.  It  would  be  sheer  disloyalty 
to  the  family  inheritance  if  I  did  not  like  to  eat  well,  just 
as  it  would  be  rank  hypocrisy  to  see  in  my  loyalty  a  virtue. 
Accomac's  reputation  for  good  eating  has  barely  got 
beyond  the  local  history  book,  Accomac,  I  find,  being  a 
place  you  must  have  belonged  to  at  one  time  or  another, 
to  know  anything  about.  But  Philadelphia  made  a  repu- 
tation for  its  high  living  as  soon  as  the  Philadelphian 
emerged  from  his  original  cave,  or  sooner — read  Watson 
and  every  other  authority  and  you  will  find  that  before 
he  was  out  of  it,  even  the  family  cat  occupied  itself  in 
hunting  delicacies  for  the  family  feast.  And  right  off 
the  Philadelphian  understood  the  truth  the  scientist 
has   been   centuries    in   groping   after:    that    if   people's 

413 


4U  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

food  is  to  do  them  good,  they  must  take  pleasure  in  it. 
The  material  was  his  the  minute  he  landed  on  the  spot, 
not  the  least  recommendations  of  which  were  its  fish 
and  game  and  its  convenience  as  a  port  where  all  the 
country  did  not  produce  could  be  brought  from  countries 
that  did — a  spot  that,  half-way  bei;\veen  the  Xorth  and 
the  South,  assured  to  Philadelphia  one  of  the  best-stocked 
markets  in  the  world,  ever  the  wonder  and  admiration  of 
every  visitor  to  the  town.  Pleasure  in  the  material,  if  his- 
tory can  be  trusted,  dates  as  far  back.  A  \^^se  man  once 
suggested  the  agreeable  journeys  that  could  be  planned  on 
a  gastronomical  map  of  France — from  the  Tripe  of  Caen 
to  the  Bouillabaisse  of  jNIarseilles,  from  the  Chateau  INIar- 
gaux  of  Bordeaux  to  the  Champagne  of  Rheims,  from  the 
Ducks  of  Rouen  to  the  Truffles  of  Perigord,  and  so,  from 
one  end  to  the  other  of  that  Land  of  Plenty.  I  would 
suggest  that  an  agreeable  record  of  Philadelphia  might  be 
based  upon  the  dinners  it  has  eaten,  from  the  historic 
dinner  foraged  for  by  the  cat  over  a  couple  of  centuries 
ago,  to  the  banquet  of  yesterday  in  Spruce  Street  or 
Walnut,  at  the  Bellevue  or  the  Ritz. 

I  should  like  some  day  to  write  this  historj^  myself, 
when  I  have  more  space  and  time  at  my  disposal.  I  have 
always  been  blessed  with  a  healthy  appetite,  a  decent 
sense  of  discrimination  in  satisfying  it,  and  also  a  deep 
interest  in  the  Philosophy  of  Food  ever  since  I  began  to 
collect  cookery  books.  The  more  profoundly  I  go  into  the 
subject,  the  readier  I  am  to  believe  with  Brillat-Savarin 


"^VS^-^^^  ^4^  '.-.i.^^ 


THE  PHILADELPHIA  DISPENSARY  FROM  INDEPENDENCE  SQUARE 


PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE  417 

that  what  a  man  is  depends  a  good  deal  on  what  he  eats. 
This  is  why  I  think  that  if  the  Philadelphian  is  to  be 
understood,  the  study  of  him  must  not  stop  with  his 
politics  and  his  literature  and  his  art,  but  must  include  his 
marketing  and  his  bill  of  fare.  He  has  had  the  wit  never 
to  doubt  the  importance  of  both,  and  the  pride  never  to 
make  light  of  his  genius  for  living  well. 

The  early  Friends  in  Philadelphia  knew  better  than  to 
pull  a  long  face,  burrowing  for  the  snares  of  the  flesh  and 
the  devil  in  every  necessity  of  life,  like  the  unfortunate 
Puritans  up  in  'New  England.  It  was  not  to  lead  a 
hermit's  existence  William  Penn  invited  them  to  settle 
on  the  banks  of  the  Delaware,  and  he  and  they  realized 
that  pioneer's  work  could  not  be  done  on  hermit's  fare. 
They  entertained  no  fanatical  disdain  for  the  pleasures 
of  the  table,  no  ascetic  abhorrence  to  good  food,  daintily 
prepared.  Brawn  and  chocolate  and  venison  were  Penn's 
tender  offering  as  lover  to  Hannah  Callowhill,  olives 
and  wine  his  loving  gift  as  friend  to  Isaac  Norris.  For 
equally  "  acceptable  presents  "  that  admirable  citizen  had 
to  thank  many  besides  Penn.  James  Logan  knew  that  the 
best  way  to  manage  your  official  is  to  dine  him,  and  in  his 
day,  and  after  it,  straight  on,  no  public  commissioner,  and 
indeed  no  private  traveller,  could  visit  Philadelphia  and 
not  be  fed  with  its  banquets  and  comforted  with  its 
Madeira  and  Punch,  while  few  could  refrain  from  saying 
so  with  an  eloquence  and  gratitude  that  did  them  honour. 
Benjamin  Franklin,  keeping  up  the  tradition,  was  known 

27 


tl 


418  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

to  feast  more  excellently  than  a  philosopher  ought,  and 
his  philosophy  of  food  is  explained  by  his  admission  in  a 
letter  that  he  would  rather  discover  a  recipe  for  making 
Parmesan  cheese  in  an  Italian  town  than  any  ancient  in- 
scription. The  American  Philosophical  Society  could  not 
conduct  its  investigations  without  the  aid  of  dinners  and 
breakfasts,  nor  could  any  other  Philadelphia  Society  or 
Club  study,  or  read,  or  hunt,  or  fish,  or  legislate,  or  pursue 
its  appointed  ends,  without  fine  cooking  and  hard  drinking 
^though  I  hope  they  were  not  the  inspiration  of  Thomas 
Jefferson's  severe  criticism  of  his  fellow  Americans  who, 
he  said,  were  unable  to  terminate  the  most  sociable  meals 
without  transforming  themselves  into  brutes.  It  was 
impossible  for  young  ladies  and  grave  elders  to  keep 
descriptions  of  public  banquets  and  family  feasts  and 
friendly  tea-drinkings  out  of  their  letters  and  diaries: 
one  reason  of  the  fascination  their  letters  and  diaries  have 
for  Philadelphians  who  read  them  to-day.  And  alto- 
gether, by  the  Revolution,  to  judge  from  John  Adams' 
account  of  his  "  sinful  feasts "  in  Philadelphia,  and 
General  Greene's  description  of  the  luxury  of  Boston  as 
"  an  infant  babe  "  to  the  luxury  of  Philadelphia,  and  the 
rest  of  America's  opinion  of  Philadelphia  as  a  place  of 
*'  crucifying  expenses,"  and  many  more  signs  of  the 
times,  the  dinners  of  Philadelphia  had  become  so  in- 
separable from  any  meeting,  function,  or  business,  that 
I  am  tempted  to  question  whether,  had  they  not  been  eaten, 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  could  have  been  signed. 


MORRIS  HOUSE,  GERMANTOWN 


PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE  421 

But  it  was  signed  and  who  can  say,  in  face  of  the  fact,  that 
Philadelphia  was  any  the  worse  for  its  feasting?  And 
what  if  it  proved  a  dead  weight  to  John  Adams,  did  Bos- 
ton, did  any  other  town  do  more  in  the  cause  of  patriotism 
and  independence? 

One  inevitable  feature  of  the  "  sinful  feasts  "  was  the 
Madeira  John  Adams  drank  at  a  great  rate,  but  suffered 
no  inconvenience  from.  I  could  not  dispense  with  it  iji 
these  old  records,  such  a  sober  place  does  it  hold  in  my 
own  memories  of  Philadelphia,  The  decanter  of  Madeira 
on  my  Grandfather's  dinner  table  marked  the  state  occa- 
sion, and  I  would  not  have  recognized  Philadelphia  on  my 
return  had  the  same  decanter  not  been  produced  in  wel- 
come. It  was  an  assurance  that  Philadelphia  was  still 
Philadelphia,  though  sky-scrapers  might  break  the  once 
pleasant  monotony  of  low,  red  brick  houses  and  motor 
horns  resound  through  the  once  peaceful  streets. 

From  the  beginning  Madeira  was  one  of  the  things  no 
good  Philadelphia  household  could  be  without — just  the 
sound,  dignified,  old-fashioned  wine  the  Philadelphian 
would  be  expected  to  patronize,  respectable  and  upright  as 
himself.  Orders  for  it  lighten  those  interminably  long 
letters  in  the  Penn-Logan  correspondence,  so  long  that  all 
the  time  I  was  reading  them,  I  kept  wondering  which  of 
the  three  I  ought  to  pity  the  most :  Penn  for  what  he  had 
to  endure  from  his  people ;  Logan  for  having  to  keep  him 
posted  in  his  intolerable  wrongs;  or  myself  for  wading 
through  all  they  both  had  to  say  on  the  subject.    As  time 


422  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

went  on,  I  do  not  believe  there  was  an  official  function  at 
which  jNIadeira  did  not  figure.  There  I  always  find  it — the 
wine  of  ceremony,  the  sacrificial  wine,  without  which  no 
compact  could  be  sealed,  no  event  solemnized,  no  pleasure 
enjoyed.  It  seems  to  punctuate  every  step  in  the  career 
of  Philadelphians  and  of  Philadelphia,  and  I  thought 
nothing  could  be  more  characteristic,  when  I  read  the 
Autobiography  of  Franklin,  than  that  it  should  have  been 
over  the  Philadelphia  Madeira  one  Governor  of  Pennsyl- 
vania planned  a  future  for  him,  and  another  Governor  of 
Pennsylvania  later  on  discoursed  provincial  affairs  with 
him,  "  most  profuse  of  his  solicitations  and  promises  " 
under  its  pleasant  influence.  Throughout  the  old  annals 
I  am  conscious  of  that  decanter  of  JNIadeira  always  at  hand, 
the  Philadelphian  "  as  free  of  it  as  an  Apple  Tree  of 
its  Fruit  on  a  Windy  Day  in  the  month  of  July,"  one  old 
visitor  to  the  town  records  with  a  pretty  fancy  for  which, 
as  like  as  not,  it  was  responsible. 

And  throughout  the  more  modern  records,  there  it  is 
again.  Even  in  the  old-fashioned  Philadelphia  boarding- 
house  less  than  a  century  ago,  the  men  after  dinner  sat 
over  their  Madeira.  New  generations  of  visitors,  like 
the  old,  drank  it  and  approved,  the  JNIadeira  that  sup- 
ported John  Adams  at  Philadelphia's  sinful  feasts  help- 
ing to  steer  Thackeray  and  an  endless  succession  of 
strangers  at  the  gate  through  Philadelphia's  course  of 
suppers  and  dinners.  It  amuses  me  to  recall,  as  an  in- 
stance of  all  it  represented  to  Philadelphia,  that  for  a 


PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE  423 

couple  of  years  at  the  Convent,  tliough  a  healthier  child 
than  I  never  lived,  I  was  made  by  the  orders  of  my  Father, 
obeyed  by  no  means  unwillingly  on  my  part,  to  drink  a 
glass  of  Madeira,  with  a  biscuit,  every  morning  at  eleven. 
And  so  deep-rooted  was  its  use  in  the  best  traditions  of 
Philadelphia  respectability,  that  the  irreproachable  Phila- 
delphia ladies  who  wrote  cookery  books  never  omitted  the 
glass  of  Madeira  from  the  Terrapin,  and  went  so  far  as  to 
quote  Scripture  and  to  recommend  a  little  of  it  for  the 
stomach's  sake. 

II 

One  of  these  Philadelphia  ladies  wrote  the  most  fa- 
mous cookery  book  to  this  day  published  in  America;  a 
fact  which  pleases  me,  partly  because,  with  Edward  Fitz- 
gerald, I  cannot  help  liking  a  cookery  book,  and  still  more 
because  it  flatters  my  pride  as  a  Philadelphian  that  so 
famous  a  book  should  come  from  Philadelphia.  It  seems 
superfluous  to  add  that  I  mean  Miss  Leslie's  Complete 
Cookery.    What  else  could  I  mean? 

There  had  been  cookery  books  in  America  before  Miss 
Leslie's,  America,  with  Philadelphia  to  set  the  standard, 
could  not  get  on  very  far  without  them.  If  in  the  hurry 
and  flurry  of  Colonial  life,  the  American  did  not  have  the 
leisure  to  write  them,  he  borrowed  them,  the  speediest  way 
to  manufacture  any  kind  of  literature.  There  is  an 
American  edition  of  Mrs.  Glasse,  with  Mrs.  Glasse  left 
out^ — the  American  pirate  was  nothing  if  not  thorough. 


424  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

There  is  an  American  edition  of  Richard  Briggs  who  was 
not  deprived  of  the  credit  of  his  book,  though  robbed  of 
his  title.  There  are  American  editions  I  have  no  doubt  of 
many  besides  which  I  have  only  to  haunt  the  old  book- 
stalls and  second-hand  book  stores  of  Philadelphia  assidu- 
ously enough  to  find.  But  of  American  cookery  books, 
either  borrowed  or  original,  before  the  time  of  ]Miss  Leslie, 
I  own  but  the  stolen  ]Mrs.  Glasse  and  an  insignificant  little 
manual  issued  in  Xew  York  in  1813,  an  American  adapta- 
tion probably  of  an  English  model  to  which  I  have  not  yet 
succeeded  in  tracing  it. 

Nor  do  I  know  of  any  I  do  not  own,  and  I  know  as 
much  of  American  cookery  books  as  any  of  the  authori- 
ties, and  I  do  not  mind  saying  so,  as  I  can  without  the 
shadow  of  conceit.  Vicaire  includes  only  two  or  three  in 
his  Bibliographie;  Hazlitt,  to  save  trouble,  confined  him- 
self to  English  books;  Dr.  Oxford's  interest  is  frankly  in 
the  publications  of  his  own  country,  though,  in  his  first 
bibliography,  he  mentions  a  few  foreign  volumes,  and  in 
his  second  he  refers  to  one  American  pirac)',  and  these  are 
the  three  chief  bibliographers  of  the  Kitchen  in  Europe. 
American  authorities  do  not  exist,  when  I  except  myself. 
It  is  true  that  G.  H.  Ellwanger  made  a  list  of  cookery 
books,  but  he  threw  them  together  anyhow,  with  no  attempt 
at  classification,  and  his  list  scarcely  merits  the  name  of 
bibliography.  The  history  of  the  American  cookery  book 
is  a  virgin  field,  and  as  such  I  present  it  to  the  innumerable 
American  students  who  are  turned  out  from  the  Univer- 


i','>nsit  ■  (3      ■'- 


^^~^^^  .v^.^^;>^:^v^^^N>^^»::TT?^^ 


"^*.,. 


THE  STATE  HOUSE  COLONNADE 


PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE  427 

sities,  year  after  year,  for  the  research  work  that  is  fre- 
quently of  as  little  use  to  themselves  as  to  anybody  else. 

But  many  as  may  be  the  discoveries  in  the  future,  Miss 
Leslie  cannot  be  dethroned  nor  deprived  of  her  distinction 
as  the  Mrs.  Glasse  of  America.  Other  writers,  if  there 
were  any,  were  allowed  to  disappear;  should  they  be 
dragged  out  of  their  obscurity  now,  it  would  be  as  biblio- 
graphical curiosities,  bibliographical  specimens.  Miss 
Leslie  was  never  forgotten,  she  survives  to-day,  her  name 
honoured,  her  book  cherished.  She  leapt  into  fame  on  its 
publication,  and  with  such  ardour  was  the  First  Edition 
bought  up,  with  such  ardour  either  reverently  preserved 
or  diligently  consulted  that  I,  the  proud  possessor  of  Mrs. 
Glasse  in  her  First  Edition  "  pot  folio,"  of  Apicius  Coelius, 
Gervase  Markham,  Scappi,  Grimod  de  la  Reyniere,  and 
no  end  of  others  in  their  first  Editions,  cannot  as  yet  boast 
a  First  Edition  of  Miss  Leslie.  I  have  tried,  my  friends 
have  tried;  the  most  important  book-sellers  in  the  country 
have  tried;  and  in  vain,  until  I  begin  to  think  I  might 
as  well  hope  for  the  Elzevir  Patissier  Francois  as  the  1837 
Complete  Cookery.  It  may  be  hidden  on  some  miexplored 
Philadelphia  book  shelf,  for  it  was  as  indispensable  in  the 
Philadelphia  household  as  the  decanter  of  Madeira.  I  ask 
myself  if  its  appreciation  in  the  kitchen,  for  which  it  was 
written,  is  the  reason  why  I  have  no  recollection  of  it  in 
the  Eleventh  and  Spruce  Street  house,  well  as  I  remember 
Lippiricotfs  on  the  back  parlour  table,  nor  in  my  Father's 
library,  well  as  I  recall  his  editions  of  Scott  and  Dickens, 


428  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Voltaire  and  Rousseau,  a  combination  expressive  of  a 
liberal  taste  in  literature.  But  never  anywhere  have  I  seen 
that  elusive  First  Edition,  never  anywhere  succeeded  in 
obtaining  an  earlier  edition  than  the  Fifty-Eighth.  The 
date  is  1858 — think  of  it!  fifty-eight  editions  in  twenty-one 
years!  Can  our  "  Best  Sellers  "  surpass  that  as  a  record? 
Or  can  anj-^  American  writer  on  cookery  after  JNIiss  Leslie, 
from  Mrs.  Sarah  Joseph  Hale  and  Jenny  Jime  to  JSIarion 
Harland  and  the  Philadelphia  INIrs.  Rorer,  rank  with  her 
as  a  rival  to  ]Mrs.  Glasse,  as  the  author  of  a  cookery  book 
that  has  become  the  rare  prize  of  the  collector  ? 

Ill 

It  is  so  proud  an  eminence  for  a  quiet  Philadelphia 
maiden  lady  in  the  Eighteen-Thirties  and  Forties  to  have 
reached  that  I  cannot  but  wish  I  knew  more  of  Miss  Leslie 
personally.  From  her  contemporaries  I  have  learned 
nothing  save  that  she  went  to  tea  parties  like  any  ordinary 
Philadelphian,  that  she  was  interested  in  the  legends  and 
traditions  of  her  town,  which  wasn't  like  any  ordinary 
Philadelphian,  and  that  she  condescended  to  journalism, 
editing  The  Casket.  There  is  a  portrait  of  her  at  the 
Academy,  Philadelphia  decorum  so  stamped  upon  her  face 
and  dress  that  it  makes  me  more  curious  than  ever  to 
know  why  she  was  not  the  mother  of  children  instead  of  a 
writer  of  books.  These  books  explain  that  she  had  a 
literary  conscience.  In  her  preface  to  her  Domestic 
Economy,  which  is  not  an  unworthy  companion  to  her 


PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE  429 

Complete  Cookery,  she  reveals  an  unfeiiiinine  respect  for 
style.  "  In  this  as  in  her  Cookery  Book,"  she  writes,  a 
dignity  expressed  in  her  use  of  the  third  person,  "  she  has 
not  scrupled  when  necessary,  to  sacrifice  the  sound  to  the 
sense;  repeating  the  same  words  when  no  others  could  be 
found  to  exj)ress  the  purport  so  clearly,  and  being  always 
more  anxious  to  convey  the  meaning  in  such  terms  as  could 
not  be  mistaken  than  to  risk  obscuring  it  by  attempts  at 
refined  phraseology  or  well-roimded  periods."  Now  and 
then  the  temptation  was  too  strong  and  she  fell  into 
alliteration,  writing  of  "  ponderous  puddings  and  curdled 
custards."  But  this  is  exceptional.  As  a  rule,  in  her  dry, 
business-like  sentences,  it  would  be  impossible  to  suspect 
her  of  j)hilandering  with  sound,  or  concerning  herself 
with  the  pleasure  of  her  readers. 

Her  subject  is  one,  happily,  that  can  survive  the  sacri- 
fice. The  book  is  a  monument  to  Philadelphia  cookery. 
She  was  not  so  emancipated  as  to  neglect  all  other  kitchens. 
Recipes  for  Soup  a  la  Julienne  and  Mulligatawny,  for 
Bath  Buns  and  Gooseberry  Fools,  for  Pilaus  and  Curries, 
are  concessions  to  foreign  conventions.  Recipes  for  Oj'^s- 
ters  and  Shad,  for  Gumbo  and  Buckwheat  Cakes,  for 
Mint  Juleps  and  Sweet  Potatoes,  for  Pumpkins  and  INIush, 
show  her  deference  to  ideals  cultivated  by  Americans  from 
one  State  or  another.  But  concessions  and  deference  do 
not  prevent  her  book — her  two  books — 'from  being  un- 
mistakably Philadelphian: — an  undefinable  something  in 
the  quality  and  quantity,  a  definable  something  in  the 


430  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

dishes  and  ingredients.  I  know  that  in  my  exile,  thousands 
of  miles  from  home,  when  I  open  her  Complete  Cookery, 
certain  passages  transport  me  straight  back  to  Philadel- 
phia, to  my  childhood  and  my  youth,  to  the  second-story 
back-building  dining-room  and  the  kitchen  with  the  lilacs 
at  the  back-yard  door.  I  read  of  Dried  Beef,  chipped  or 
frizzled  in  butter  and  eggs,  and,  as  of  old  in  the  Eleventh 
and  Spruce  Street  house,  a  delicious  fragrance,  characteris- 
tic of  Philadelphia  as  the  sickly  smell  of  the  ailanthus,  fills 
my  nostrils  and  my  appetite  is  keen  again  for  the  eight 
o'clock  tea,  long  since  given  way  to  the  eight  o'clock 
dinner.  I  turn  the  pages  and  come  to  Reed  Birds,  roasted 
or  baked,  and  at  once  I  feel  the  cool  of  the  radiant  fall 
evening,  and  I  am  at  Belmont  or  Strawberry  Mansion 
after  the  long  walk  through  the  park,  one  of  the  gay  party 
for  whom  the  cloth  is  laid.  Or  the  mere  mention  of 
Chicken  Salad  sets  back  the  clock  of  the  years  and  drops 
me  into  the  chattering  midst  of  the  Philadelphia  five 
o'clock  reception,  in  time  for  the  spread  that,  for  senti- 
ment's sake,  is  dear  to  me  in  memory,  but  that,  for  diges- 
tion's sake,  I  hope  never  to  see  revived.  Or  a  thrill  is  in 
the  dressing  for  the  salad  alone,  in  the  mere  dash  of  mus- 
tard that  Philadelphia  has  the  independence  to  give  to  its 
Mayonnaise.  I  am  conservative  in  matters  of  art.  I  would 
not  often  recommend  a  deviation  from  French  precedent 
which  is  the  most  reliable  and  the  finest.  But  Philadelphia 
may  be  trusted  to  deviate,  when  it  permits  itself  the  liberty, 
with  discretion  and  distinction. 


THE  SMITH  MEMORIAL,  WEST  FAIRMOUNT  PARK 


CHAPTER  XVII:   PHILADELPHIA 
AT  TABLE— CONTINUED 

I 

SO  much  of  Philadelphia  is  in  Miss  Leslie  that  her 
silence  on  one  or  two  matters  essentially  Phila- 
delphian  is  the  greater  disappointment. 
I  have  said  that  when  I  was  young  it  was  the  busi- 
ness of  the  man  of  the  house  to  market  and  to  make 
the  Mayonnaise  for  the  dinner's  salad,  and  I  have  searched 
for  the  reason  in  vain.  His  appropriation  of  the  market- 
ing seems  to  be  comparatively  modern.  If  the  chronicles 
are  to  be  trusted,  it  was  the  woman's  business  as  late  as 
Mrs.  Washington's  day.  But  by  mine,  the  man's  going  to 
market  had  settled  solidly  into  one  of  those  Philadelphia 
customs  taken  for  granted  by  Philadelphians  simply  be- 
cause they  were  Philadelphia  customs.  Never  in  print 
have  I  seen  any  reference  to  this  division  of  family  labour 
except  in  the  Philadelphia  stories  of  Thomas  A.  Janvier 
who,  as  a  Philadelphian,  knew  that  it  became  well  brought 
up  Philadelphia  men  to  attend  to  the  marketing  and  that 
duties  becoming  to  them  were  above  explanation.  Janvier 
knew  also  that  only  in  Philadelphia,  probably,  could  it 
occur  to  the  "  master  of  a  feast  "  to  dress  the  salad,  and 
that  this  was  the  reason  "  why  a  better  salad  is  served  at 
certain  dinner  tables  in  Philadelphia  than  at  any  other 

28  433 


434  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

dinner  tables  in  the  whole  world."  JNIiss  Leslie  is  not 
without  honour  in  her  own  town  and  was  there  reverenced 
by  no  one  as  truly  as  by  Janvier,  but  his  reverence  for  the 
Art  of  Cookery  was  more  profound  and  he  shared  the 
belief  of  the  initiated  that  in  it  man  surpasses  as  hitherto, 
I  regret  to  say,  he  has  surpassed  in  all  the  arts. 

Janvier  himself  was  the  last  "  master  of  the  feast  "  it 
was  my  good  fortime  to  watch  preparing  the  ]Mayonnaise. 
It  was  a  solemn  rite  in  his  hands,  and  the  result  not  un- 
Avorthy — his  salads  were  delicious,  perfect,  original,  their 
originality,  however,  never  pushed  to  open  defiance  of 
the  Philadelphia  precedents  he  respected.  One  of  my 
pleasantest  memories  of  him  is  of  his  salad-making  at 
his  own  dinner  table  in  his  London  rooms,  one  or  two 
friends  informally  gathered  about  him,  and  the  summer 
evening  so  warm  that  he  appeared  all  in  white — a  splendid 
presence,  for  he  was  an  unusually  handsome  man,  of  the 
rich,  flamboyant  type  that  has  gone  out  of  fashion  almost 
everywhere  except  in  the  South  of  France.  The  white 
added,  somehow,  to  the  eff'ect  of  ceremony,  and  he  lingered 
over  every  stage  of  the  preparation  and  the  mixing, — 
the  Philadelphia  touch  of  mustard  not  omitted, — w  ith  due 
gravity  and  care.  How  different  the  salad  created  with 
this  ceremonj'^  from  the  usual  makeshift  mixed  nobody 
knows  how"  or  where! 

That  the  Philadelphia  man  should  have  accepted  this 
responsibility,  explains  better  than  I  could  how  high  is 
the  Philadelphia  standard.     I  could  not  understand  INIiss 


THE  BASIN,  OLD  WATER-WORKS 


PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE  437 

Leslie's  silence  on  the  subject,  did  I  not  suspect  her  of  a 
disapproval  as  complete  as  her  Cookery.  She  had  no  new- 
fangled notions  on  the  position  of  woman,  no  desire  to  dis- 
pute man's  long-established  superiority.  If  she  was  will- 
ing to  teach  women  how  to  become  accomplished  house- 
wives, it  was  that  they  might  administer  to  the  comfort 
and  satisfy  the  appetite  of  their  fathers  and  brothers  and 
husbands  and  sons.  The  end  of  woman,  according  to  her 
creed,  is  to  make  the  home  agreeable  for  man,  and  it  would 
save  us  many  of  to-day's  troubles  if  we  agreed  with  her. 
No  man,  since  it  is  to  his  advantage,  will  blame  her  for 
being  more  orthodox  as  a  woman  than  as  a  Philadelphian, 
nor  is  it  at  very  great  cost  that  I  forgive  her.  I  prize  her 
book  too  much  from  the  collector's  standpoint,  if  from  no 
other,  to  resent  its  sentiment.  And  my  joy  in  my  copy — 
in  my  Fifty-eighth  Edition — is  none  the  less  because  it  was 
presented  to  me  by  Janvier  who,  in  a  few  short  stories, 
gave  the  spirit  of  the  Philadelphia  feast  as  Miss  Leslie,  in 
two  substantial  volumes,  collected  and  classified  its 
materials. 

Another  thing  I  do  not  find  in  INIiss  Leslie  is  the  Oyster 
Croquette,  which  she  could  not  have  ignored  had  she  once 
eaten  it.  Therefore  I  am  led  to  see  in  it  the  product  of  a 
generation  nearer  my  own.  In  my  memories  of  child- 
hood it  is  inseparable  from  my  Grandmother's  eight 
o'clock  tea  on  evenings  when  the  family  were  invited  in 
state — in  my  memories  of  youth  inseparable  from  every 
afternoon  or  evening  party  at  which  I  feasted  fearlessly 


438  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

and  well — and  it  figured  at  many  a  Sunday  high-tea,  that 
exquisite  feast  which,  by  its  very  name,  refuses  to  let  itself 
be  confounded  with  its  coarser  counterpart  known  to  the 
English  as  a  meat-tea.  From  these  facts  I  conclude, 
though  I  have  no  other  data  to  rely  upon,  that  the  Oyster 
Croquette  nmst  have  been  not  simply  the  masterpiece, 
but  the  creation  of  Augustine,  for  the  Oyster  Croquette 
which  the  well-brought-up  Philadelphian  then  ate  at  mo- 
ments of  rejoicing  was  always  of  his  cooking. 

II 

Augustine — the  explanation  is  superfluous  for  Phila- 
delphians  of  my  age — was  a  coloured  man  with  the  genius 
of  his  race  for  cookery  and  probably  a  drop  or  more  of  the 
w^hite  blood  that  developed  in  him  also  the  genius  for 
organization,  so  that  he  was  a  leader  among  caterers,  as 
well  as  a  master  among  cooks.  It  is  worth  noting  that 
the  demand  for  cooks  in  Philadelphia  being  great,  the 
greatest  cooks  in  America  never  failed  to  supply  it :  worth 
noting  also  that  the  Philadelphia  housewife,  being  thus 
well  supplied,  had  not  begun  when  I  was  young  to  amuse 
herself  with  the  chafing-dish  as  she  does  now.  For  many 
years,  Augustine's  name  and  creations  were  the  chief  dis- 
tinction of  every  Philadelphia  feast.  To  have  entertained 
without  his  assistance  would  have  been  as  serious  a  crime 
as  to  have  omitted  Terrapin — in  season — and  Ice-cream 
from  the  Philadelphia  menu;  as  daring  as  to  have  gone  for 
chocolates  anywhere  save  to  Penas'  or  for  smilax  anj'ivhere 


PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE  439 

save  to  Pennock's,  and  this  sort  of  daring  in  Philadelphia 
would  have  been  deplored  not  as  harmless  originality,  but 
as  eccentricity  in  the  worst  possible  taste.  Thanks  to 
Augustine,  Philadelphia  became  celebrated  in  America  for 
its  Oyster  Croquettes  and  Terrapin  and  Broiled  Oysters — 
what  a  work  of  genius  this,  with  the  sauce  of  his  invention ! 
— as  Bresse  is  in  France  for  its  Chickens,  or  York  in  Eng- 
land for  its  Hams. 

So  much  I  know  about  him,  and  no  more — but  his  name 
should  go  down  in  history  with  those  of  Vatel  and  Careme 
and  GoufFe:  an  artist  if  ever  there  was  one!  Because  he 
did  not  commit  suicide  like  Vatel — his  oysters  were  never 
late — because  he  did  not  write  encyclopedias  of  cookery 
like  Careme  and  Gouffe,  his  name  and  fame  are  in  danger 
of  perishing  unless  every  Philadelphian  among  my  con- 
temporaries hastens  to  lay  a  laurel  leaf  upon  his  grave. 
I  fear  nothing  as  yet  has  been  done  to  preserve  his  memory. 
His  name  survives  on  the  simple  front  of  a  South  Fif- 
teenth Street  house,  where  I  saw  it  and  rejoiced  when 
I  was  last  at  home  and,  in  compliment  to  him,  went  inside 
and  ate  my  lunch  in  the  demure  light  of  a  highly  respecta- 
ble dining-room  in  the  society  of  a  dozen  or  more  highly 
respectable  Philadelphians  seated  at  little  tables.  I  could 
not  quarrel  with  my  lunch — it  was  admirably  cooked  and 
served — but  it  was  an  everyday  lunch,  not  the  occasional 
feast — the  Augustine  of  old  did  not  cook  the  ordinary  meal 
and  the  Fifteenth  Street  house  is  too  modest  to  be  ac- 
cepted as  the  one  and  only  monument  to  his  memory. 


440  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

The  Oyster  Croquette  could  not  have  sprung  up  in  a 
day  and  triumphed  were  Philadelphia  as  hide-bound  with 
convention  as  it  is  supposed  to  be.  Philadelphia  is  con- 
servative in  matters  of  cookery  when  conservatism  means 
clinging  to  its  great  traditions ;  it  is  liberal  when  liberality 
means  adapting  to  its  own  delightful  ends  the  new  idea  or 
the  new  masterpiece.  It  never  ceased  to  be  sure  of  its 
materials  nor  of  their  variety,  the  Philadelphia  market 
half  way  between  Xorth  and  South  continuing  to  provide 
what  is  best  in  both:  the  meats  of  the  finest — the  fattest 
mutton  he  ever  saw,  Cobbett,  though  an  Englishman, 
found  in  Philadelphia — its  fruits  and  vegetables  of  the 
most  various,  its  butter,  good  Darlington  butter,  famed 
from  one  end  of  the  land  to  the  other.  And  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  its  materials,  for  the  sake  of  eating  better,  Phila- 
delphians  never  have  hesitated  to  take  their  good  where 
they  have  found  it.  Dishes  we  prize  as  the  most  essentially 
Philadeljjhian  have  sometimes  the  shortest  pedigree.  Why, 
the  Ice-cream  that  is  now  one  of  Philadelphia's  most  re- 
spected institutions,  came  so  recently  that  people  we,  of 
my  generation,  knew  could  remember  its  coming.  On 
my  return  to  Philadelphia,  with  the  advantage  the  per- 
spective absence  gives,  I  could  appreciate  more  clearly 
than  if  I  had  stayed  at  home  how  well  Philadelphia  eats 
and  how  nobly  it  has  maintained  its  old  ideals,  how  nobly 
accepted  new  ones.  It  has  not  wavered  in  the  practice 
of  eating  well  and  taking  pleasure  in  the  eating — the 
reputation  of  giving  good  dinners  is,  as  in  my  youth,  the 


GIRARD  STREET 


PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE  443 

most  highly  prized.  To  quote  Janvier :  "  The  person  who 
achieves  celebrity  of  this  sort  in  Philadelphia  is  not  unlike 
the  seraph  vt^ho  attains  eminence  in  the  heavenly  choir," 
But  I  am  conscious  of  a  latitude  that  would  not  have  been 
allowed  before  in  the  choice  of  a  place  to  eat  them  in,  and 
amazed  at  the  number  of  new  dishes. 

Ill 

The  back-building  dining-room  was  the  one  scene  I 
knew  for  the  feast.  If  I  were  a  man  I  could  tell  a  differ- 
ent tale.  As  a  woman  I  used  to  hear — all  Philadelphia 
women  used  to  hear — of  colossal  masculine  banquets  at  the 
Philadelphia  Club  and  the  Union  League,  of  revels  at  the 
Clover  Club,  of  fastidious  feasts  at  more  esoteric  clubs — 
the  State  in  Schuylkill,  the  Fish-House  Club,  and  what 
were  the  others? — clubs  carrying  on  the  great  Colonial 
traditions,  perpetuating  the  old  Colonial  Punch  as  zeal- 
ously as  the  Vestal  Virgins  watched  their  sacred  fire, 
observing  mystic  practices  in  the  Kitchen,  the  Philadelphia 
man  himself,  it  was  said,  putting  on  the  cook's  apron,  pre- 
siding over  grills  and  saucepans,  and  serving  up  dishes  of 
such  exquisite  quality  as  it  has  not  entered  into  the  mind 
of  mere  woman  to  conceive  or  to  execute:  with  the  true 
delicacy  of  the  gourmet  choosing  rather  to  consecrate  his 
talents  to  the  one  perfect  dish  than  to  squander  them  upon 
many,  shrinking  as  an  artist  must  from  the  plebeian 
"  groaning-board  "  of  the  gluttonous  display.  To  stories 
of  these  marvels  I  listened  again  and  again,  but  my  only 


444  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

knowledge  of  them  is  based  on  hearsay.  I  would  as  soon 
have  expected  to  be  admitted  to  ]SIount  Athos  or  to  the 
old  Chartreuse  as  to  banquets  and  feasts  and  revels  so 
purely  masculine;  to  ask  for  the  vote  woidd  have  seemed 
less  ambitious  than  to  pray  for  admission.  What  folly 
then  it  would  be  for  me  to  pretend  to  describe  them !  What 
presumption  to  affect  a  personal  acquaintance  I  have  not 
and  could  not  have!  Into  what  pitfalls  of  ignorance 
would  I  stumble !  It  is  for  the  Philadelphia  man  some  day 
to  write  this  particular  chapter  in  the  history  of  Philadel- 
phia at  Table. 

As  to  the  Philadelphia  woman  at  the  period  of  which 
I  speak,  she  had  no  Clubs.  It  was  not  supposed  to  be 
good  form  for  her  to  feast  outside  of  the  back-building 
dining-room.  She  might  relieve  her  hunger  with  Oys- 
ters in  Jones's  dingj^  little  shop,  or  a  plate  of  Ice-cream 
in  Sautter's  sombre  saloon;  or,  with  a  boating  party  in 
spring  or  summer,  she  might  go  for  dinner  or  supper  to 
one  of  the  restaurants  in  the  Park.  But  for  more  serious 
entertaining,  home,  or  her  friends'  home,  was  the  place. 
Not  that  she  was,  as  the  fragile,  fainting  Angelina  type 
once  admired,  too  ethereal  to  think  of  food  and  drink. 
She  could  order  and  eat  a  luncheon,  or  a  dinner,  with  the 
best,  though  she  did  not  do  the  marketing  or  make  the 
jMayonnaise.  But  she  would  rather  have  gone  without 
food  than  defy  the  unwritten  Philadelphia  law. 

Now  Philadelphia  has  changed  all  that.  The  wise  re- 
main faithful  to  the  back-building  dining-room  and,  within 


THE  UNION  LEAGUE,  FROM  BROAD  AND  CHESTNUT  STREETS 


PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE  447 

its  grave  and  tranquil  walls,  on  its  substantial  leather- 
covered  chairs,  Stuart's  Washington  looking  down  from 
his  place  above  the  mantelpiece,  they  continue  to  feast  with 
a  luxury  Lucullus  might  have  envied.  Fashion,  however, 
drives  the  less  wise  to  more  frivolous  scenes.  I  never 
thought  to  see  the  day  when  I  should,  in  Philadelphia, 
lunch  at  a  large,  well-appointed,  luxurious  woman's  club, 
when  I  should  be  invited  to  feast  at  the  Union  League — 
my  lunch  there  was  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  of  all 
my  extraordinary  experiences  on  my  return  to  Philadel- 
phia— when  the  cloth  for  my  dinner  would  be  laid  in  a  big, 
gay,  noisy,  crowded  Country  Club — and  yet  the  miracle 
had  been  worked  in  my  absence  and  I  saw  not  the  day,  but 
the  many  days  when  these  things  happened.  Not  only  this. 
In  Clubs  and  Country  Clubs  a  degree  of  privacy  is  still 
assured.  But  it  is  a  degree  too  much,  to  judge  from  the 
way  Philadelphia  rushes  to  lunch,  and  dine,  and  drink  the 
tea  it  does  not  want  at  five  o'clock,  in  hotels  and  restau- 
rants: our  little  secluded  oyster  saloons  exchanged  for 
dazzling  lunch  counters,  the  Spruce  and  Pine  and  Walnut 
Street  house  that  could  not  be  except  in  Philadelphia 
deserted  for  the  Ritz  and  the  Bellevue  that  might  be  in 
New  York  or  Chicago,  Paris  or  London,  Vienna  or  Rome. 
The  old  fashion  was  to  celebrate  the  feast  in  cloistered 
seclusion,  to  let  none  intrude  who  was  not  bidden  to  share 
it.  Now  the  fashion  is  to  cry  out  and  summon  the  mob 
and  the  multitude  to  gaze  upon  Philadelphia  feasting.  I 
know  that  this  is  in  a  measure  the  result  of  a  change  that  is 


448  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

not  peculiar  to  Philadelphia  alone.  All  the  world  to-day, 
wherever  you  go,  dines  in  public — ^the  modern  Dives  must 
always  dine  where  his  Lazarus  cannot  possibly  mistake  the 
gate.  But  I  could  not  have  believed  that  Philadelphia 
would  come  to  it — that  Philadelphia  would  step  out  from 
the  sanctuary  into  the  market-place  ^and  proclaim  to  the 
passer-by  the  luxury  he  had  once  so  scrupulously  kept 
to  himself, 

IV 
Nor  is  the  feast  quite  what  it  was,  though  this  is  not 
because  it  has  lost,  but  rather  because  it  has  gained.  I 
trembled  on  my  return  lest  the  old  gods  be  fallen.  My 
first  visit  after  long  years  away  was  one  of  a  few  hours 
only.  I  ran  over  from  New  York  to  lunch  with  old  friends. 
There  was  a  horrid  moment  of  bewilderment  when  I 
stepped  from  the  Pennsylvania  Station  into  a  street  where 
I  ought  to  have  been  at  home  and  was  not,  and  this  made 
me  dread  that  at  the  luncheon  the  change  would  be  more 
overwhelming.  Certain  things  belong  to,  are  a  part  of, 
certain  places  that  can  never  be  the  same  without  them. 
I  met  a  Frenchman  the  other  day  in  London,  who  had  not 
been  there  for  ten  years,  and  who  was  in  despair  because 
at  no  hotel  or  restaurant  could  he  find  a  gooseberry  or  an 
apple  tart.  They  were  not  dishes  of  which  he  was  w^armly 
enamoured ;  no  Frenchman  could  be ;  but  a  London  shorn 
of  gooseberry  and  apple  tarts  was  not  the  London  he  had 
known.  The  dread  of  the  same  disillusionment  was  in  my 
heart  as  I  drew  near  my  luncheon,  more  serious  in  my  case 


PHILADELPHIA  AT  TABLE  449 

because  the  things  I  did  not  want  to  lose  were  too  good  to 
lose.  But  my  dread  was  wasted.  Broad  Street  might 
have  changed,  but  not  the  Chicken  Salad  with  the  Philadel- 
phia dash  of  mustard  in  the  INIayonnaise,  not  the  Cro- 
quettes though  Augustine  had  gone,  not  the  Ice-cream 
rising  before  me  in  the  splendid  pyramid  of  my  child- 
hood with  the  solid  base  of  the  Coffee  Ice-cream  I  had 
never  gone  to  Sautter's  without  ordering.  And  I  knew 
that  hope  need  not  be  abandoned  when  I  was  assured  that, 
though  Sautter's  have  opened  a  big  new  place  on  Chest- 
nut Street,  where  a  long  menu  disputes  the  honours  with 
their  one  old  masterpiece,  it  is  to  the  gloomy  store  in  the 
retirement  of  Broad  and  Locust  that  the  Philadelphia 
woman,  who  gives  a  dinner,  sends  for  her  Ice-cream. 

These  things  were  unaltered — they  are  unalterable. 
All  the  old  friends  reappeared  at  the  breakfasts,  lunch- 
eons and  dinners  that  followed  in  the  course  of  the  longer 
visit  when,  not  the  Fatted  Calf,  but  the  Fatted  Shad, 
Soft- Shell  Crab,  Fried  Oyster,  Squab — how  the  name 
mystified  my  friend,  George  Steevens,  though  he  had  but 
to  open  an  old  English  cookery  book  in  my  collection  to 
know  that  in  England,  before  he  was  born,  a  Squab  was  a 
young  Pigeon — Broiled  Chicken,  Cinnamon  Bun,  little 
round  Cakes  with  white  icing  on  top,  were  prepared  for 
the  prodigal.  But  there  were  other  dishes,  other  com- 
binations new  to  me :  Grape  Fruit  had  come  in  during  my 
absence,  though  long  enough  ago  to  have  reached  Eng- 
land in  the  meanwhile;  also  the  fashion  of  serving  Shad  and 

29 


450  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Asparagus  together,  the  dernier  cri  of  the  Philadelphia 
epicure,  though — may  I  admit  it  now  as  I  have  not  dared 
to  before  ? — a  combination  in  which  I  thought  two  delicate 
flavours  were  sacrificed,  one  to  the  other.  And  there  were 
amazing  combinations  in  the  Salads,  daring,  strange,  un- 
Philadelphian,  calling  for  the  French  pressing  for  which 
my  Philadelphia  had  small  use.  I  so  little  liked  the  new 
sign  of  the  new  Sundae  at  the  new  popular  lunch-counter 
and  druggist's  that,  with  true  Philadelphia  prejudice,  I 
never  sampled  it.  And  there  were  other  innovations  I 
would  need  to  write  a  cookery  book  to  exhaust — sometimes 
successful,  sometimes  not,  but  with  no  violation  of  the 
canons  of  the  art  in  which  Philadelphia  has  ever  excelled. 
In  every  experiment,  every  novelty,  the  motive,  if  not  the 
result,  was  sound. 

For  this  reason  I  have  no  fear  for  the  future  of  Phila- 
delphia cookery,  if  only  it  has  the  courage  not  to  succumb 
unreservedly  to  cold  storage.  The  changes  may  be  many, 
but  Philadelphia  knows  how  to  sift  them,  retaining  only 
those  that  should  be  retained,  for  beneath  them  all  is  the 
changelessness  that  is  the  foundation  of  art. 


CHAPTER  XVIII:  PHILADELPHIA 
AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY 

I 

I  CONFESS  to  a  good  deal  of  emotion  as  the  train 
slowed  up  in  the  Pennsylvania  Station,  and  I  think 
I  had  a  right  to  it.  It  is  not  eveiy  day  one  comes 
home  after  a  quarter  of  a  century's  absence,  and  at 
the  first  glance  everything  was  so  bewilderingly  home- 
like. Not  that  I  had  not  had  my  misgivings  as  the  train 
neared  Philadelphia.  From  the  car  windows  I  had  seen 
my  old  Convent  at  Torresdale  transformed  beyond  rec- 
ognition, many  new  stations  with  new  names  by  the  way, 
rows  and  rows  of  houses  where  I  remembered  fields,  Phila- 
delphia grown  almost  as  big  as  London  to  get  into,  a 
new,  strange,  unbelievable  sky-line  to  the  town,  the  bridges 
multiplied  across  the  Schuylkill — change  after  change 
where  I  should  have  liked  to  jfind  everything,  every  house, 
field,  tree,  blade  of  grass  even,  just  as  I  had  left  it.  But 
what  change  there  might  be  in  the  station  kept  itself,  for 
the  moment  anj'^vay,  discreetly  out  of  sight.  For  all  the 
difference  I  saw,  I  might  have  been  starting  on  the  journey 
that  had  lasted  over  a  quarter  of  a  century  instead  of  re- 
turning from  it. 

This  made  the  shock  the  greater  when,  just  outside  in 
Market  Street,  I  was  met  by  a  company  of  mounted 

451 


452  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

policemen.  It  is  true  they  were  there  to  welcome  not  me, 
but  the  President  of  the  United  States  who  was  due  by  the 
next  train,  and  were  supported  by  the  City  Troop,  as 
indispensable  a  part  of  my  Philadelphia  as  the  sky  over 
my  head  and  the  bricks  under  my  feet ;  true  also  that,  well- 
uniformed,  well-mounted,  well-grooqied  as  they  were,  I 
felt  they  would  be  a  credit  to  any  town.  But  the  shock 
was  to  find  them  there  at  all.  Philadelphia  in  my  day  could 
not  have  run,  or  would  not  have  wanted  to  run,  to  any- 
thing so  officially  imposing ;  that  it  could  and  did  now  was 
a  warning  there  was  no  mistaking.  Whatever  Philadel- 
phia might  have  developed,  or  deteriorated,  into,  it  was 
not  any  longer  the  Philadelphia  I  had  known  and  loved. 

It  was  the  same  sort  of  warning  all  the  way  after  that. 
Wherever  I  went,  wherever  I  turned,  I  stumbled  upon  an 
equally  impossible  jumble  of  the  familiar  and  the  un- 
familiar. At  times,  I  positively  ached  wdth  the  joy  of 
finding  places  so  exactly  as  I  remembered  them  that  I 
caught  myself  sapng,  just  here  "this "  happened,  or 
"that,"  as  I  and  my  Youth  met  ourselves;  at  others  I 
could  have  cried  for  the  absurdity,  the  tragedy,  of  finding 
ever}i:hing  so  different  that  never  in  a  foreign  land  had 
I  seemed  more  hopelessly  a  foreigner. 

I  did  not  have  to  go  farther  than  my  hotel  for  a  re- 
minder that  Philadelphia,  to  oblige  me,  had  not  stood 
altogether  still  during  my  quarter  of  a  century's  absence, 
but  had  been,  and  was,  busy  refashioning  itself  into  some- 
thing preposterously  new.    From  one  of  my  high  windows 


'^•■-  r^ 


^>^' 


BROAD  STREET  STATION 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY   455 

I  might  look  down  to  the  Philadelphia  Library  and  the 
Episcopal  Academy, — those  two  bulwarks  of  Philadel- 
phia respectability — and  beyond,  stretching  peacefully 
away  to  the  peaceful  curves  of  the  Delaware,  to  a  wide 
plain  of  flat  red  roofs  and  chimneys,  broken  by  the  green 
lines  of  the  trees  that  follow  the  straight  course  of 
Philadelphia's  streets  and  by  the  small  green  spaces  of 
the  trees  that  shade  Philadelphia's  back-yards:  level  and 
lines  and  spaces  I  knew  as  well  as  a  lesson  learnt  by  heart. 
But,  from  the  midst  of  this  red  plain  of  roofs,  huge  high 
buildings,  like  towers,  that  I  did  not  know,  sprang  up  into 
the  blue  air,  increasing  in  number  as  my  eye  wandered 
northward  until,  from  the  other  window,  I  saw  them 
gathered  into  one  great,  amazing,  splendid  group  with 
William  Penn,  in  full-skirted  coat  and  broad-brimmed  hat, 
springing  still  higher  above  them. 

When  I  went  down  into  the  streets,  I  might  walk  for  a 
minute  or  two  between  rows  of  the  beloved  old-fashioned 
red  brick  houses,  with  their  white  marble  steps  and  their 
white  shutters  below  and  green  above,  and  then,  just  as 
exultantly  I  began  to  believe  them  changeless  as  the 
Pyramids  and  the  Sphinx,  I  would  come  with  a  jar  upon 
a  Gothic  gable,  an  absurd  turret,  a  Renaissance  doorway, 
a  facade  disfigured  by  a  hideous  array  of  fire  escapes,  a 
sham  Colonial  house,  or  some  other  upstart  that  dated 
merely  from  yesterday  or  the  day  before.  And  here  and 
there  a  sky-scraper  of  an  apartment  house  swaggered  in 
the  midst  of  the  little  "  homes  "  that  were  Philadelphia's 


456  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

pride — the  last  new  one,  to  my  dismay,  rearing  its  count- 
less stories  above  the  once  inviolate  enclosure  of  Ritten- 
house  Square. 

When  I  went  shopping  in  Chestnut  Street  my  heart 
might  rejoice  at  the  sight  of  some  of  the  .well  remembered 
names — Dreka,  Darlington,  Bailey,  \Caldwell,  as  indis- 
pensable in  my  memory  as  that  of  Penn  himself — but  it 
sank  as  quickly  in  the  vain  search  for  the  many  more  that 
have  disappeared,  or  indeed,  for  the  whole  topsy-turvy 
order  of  things  that  could  open  the  big  new  department 
stores  into  Market  Street  and  make  it  the  rival  of  Chestnut 
as  a  shopping  centre,  or  that  could  send  other  stores  up  to 
where  stores  had  never  ventured  in  my  day:  stores  in 
Walnut  Street  as  high  as  Eighteenth,  a  milliner's  in 
Locust  Street  almost  under  the  shadow  of  St.  INIark's,  a 
stock-broker  at  the  corner  of  Fifteenth  and  Walnut, 
Hughes  and  Miiller — I  need  tell  no  Philadelphian  who 
Hughes  and  INIiiller  are  even  if  they  have  unkindly  made 
two  firms  of  the  old  one — within  a  stone's  throw  of  Dr. 
Weir  Mitchell's  house;  when  I  saw  that  I  felt  that  sacri- 
lege could  go  no  furtlier. 

For  sentiment's  sake,  I  might  eat  mj^  plate  of  ice- 
cream at  the  old  little  marble-topped  table  in  the  old 
Locust  Street  gloom  at  Sautter's,  or  buy  cake  at  Dexter's 
at  the  old  corner  in  Spruce  Street,  but  Mrs.  Burns  with  her 
ice-cream,  Jones  with  his  fried  oysters,  had  vanished,  gone 
away  in  the  Ewigheit  as  irrevocably  as  Hans  Breitmann's 
Barty  or  the  snows  of  yester-year.     And  Wyeth's  and 


WANAMAKER'S 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  459 

Hubbell's  masqueraded  under  other  names,  and  Shinn, 
from  whom  we  used  to  buy  our  medicines,  was  dead,  and  the 
new  firm  sold  cigars  Mdth  their  ice-cream  sodas,  and  my 
Philadelphia  was  stuffed  with  saw-dust. 

Not  a  theatre  was  as  I  had  left  it,  new  ones  I  had 
never  heard  of  drawing  the  people  who  used  to  crowd  the 
Chestnut,  which  has  rung  down  its  curtain  on  the  last  act 
of  its  last  play  even  as  I  write ;  the  Arch,  given  over  now, 
alas!  to  the  "Movies"  and  the  "Movies"  threaten  the 
end  of  the  drama  not  only  at  the  Aroh  but  at  all  theatres 
forever ;  well-patronized  houses  flourishing  in  North  Broad 
Street;  the  staid  Academy  of  Music  thrown  into  the 
shadow  by  its  giddy  prosperous  upstart  of  a  rival  up-town. 

Vanished  were  old  landmarks  for  which  I  confidently 
looked — the  United  States  Mint  from  Chestnut  Street; 
from  Broad  and  Walnut  the  old  yellow  Dundas  House 
with  the  garden  and  the  magnolia  for  whose  blossoming 
I  had  once  eagerly  watched  with  the  coming  of  spring; 
from  Thirteenth  and  Locust  the  old  Paterson  House, 
turned  into  the  new,  imposing,  very  much  criticised  build- 
ing of  the  Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvania;  from 
Eleventh  and  Spruce,  that  other  garden  overlooked  by  the 
windows  of  the  house  my  Grandfather  built  and  lived  in,  as 
my  Father  did  after  him,  and,  to  me  more  cruel,  the  house 
itself  passed  into  other  hands,  grown  shabby  with  time,  and 
the  sign  "  For  Sale "  hanging  on  its  neglected  walls. 
Change,  change,  change — that  was  what  I  had  come  home 
for! 


460  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

II 

I  am  not  sure,  however,  that  I  had  not  the  worst  shock 
of  all  when  I  wandered  from  the  old  home,  further  down 
Spruce  Street,  below  the  beautiful  Eighteenth  Century 
Hospital,  dishonoured  now  and  shut  in  on  the  Spruce 
Street  side  by  I  hardly  know  what  in  the  way  of  new 
wings  and  wards.  As  I  had  left  it,  this  lower  part  of 
Spruce  and  Pine  and  the  neighbouring  streets,  had 
changed  less  perhaps  than  any  other  part  of  the  town — has 
changed  less  to-day  in  mere  bricks  and  mortar.  It  had 
preserved  the  appropriate  background  for  its  inheritance 
of  history  and  traditions.  Numerous  Colonial  houses  re- 
mained and  upon  them  those  of  later  date  were  modelled. 
It  had  kept  also  the  serenity  and  repose  of  the  Quaker 
City's  early  days,  the  character,  dignity,  charm.  Many 
old  Philadelphia  families  had  never  moved  away.  It  was 
clean  as  a  little  Dutch  town  with  nothing  to  interrupt  the 
quiet  but  the  gentle  jingling  of  the  occasional  leisurely 
horse-car. 

And  what  did  I  find  it? — A  slum,  captured  by  the 
Russian  Jew,  the  old  houses  dirty,  down-at-the-heel ;  the 
once  spotless  marble  steps  unwashed,  the  white  shutters 
hanging  loose;  the  decorative  old  iron  liinges  and  catches 
and  insurance  plaques  or  badges  rusting,  and  nobody  can 
say  how  much  of  the  old  woodwork  inside  burned  for 
kindling ;  Yiddish  signs  in  the  windows,  with  here  a  Jewish 
Maternity  Home,  and  there  a  Jewish  newspaper  office ;  at 


Mi 


P.<    i'!    .li). 


ST.  PETER'S  CHURCHYARD 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  463 

every  door,  almost  every  window,  and  in  groups  in  the 
street,  men,  women  and  children  with  Oriental  faces,  here 
and  there  a  man  actually  in  his  caftan,  bearded,  with  the 
little  curls  in  front  of  his  ears,  and  a  woman  with  a 
handkerchief  over  her  head,  and  all  chattering  in  Yiddish 
and  slatternly  and  dirty  as  I  remembered  them  in  South- 
Eastern  Europe,  from  Carlsbad  and  Prague  to  those  re- 
mote villages  of  Transylvania  where  dirt  was  the  sign  by 
which  I  always  knew  when  the  Jewish  quarter  was  reached. 
A  few  patriotic  Philadelphians  have  recently  returned  hop- 
ing to  stem  the  current,  and  their  houses  shine  with  cleanli- 
ness. In  Fourth  Street  the  dignified  Randolph  House, 
which  the  family  never  deserted,  seems  to  protest  against 
the  wholesale  surrender  to  the  foreign  invasion.  In  Pine 
Street,  St.  Peter's,  with  its  green  graveyard,  has  survived 
untarnished  the  surrounding  desecration.  But  I  could 
only  wonder  how  long  the  church  and  these  few  houses  will 
be  able  to  withstand  the  triumphing  alien,  and  I  abandoned 
hope  when,  at  the  very  gate  of  St.  Peter's,  a  woman  with  a 
handkerchief  tied  over  her  head  stopped  me  to  ask  the  way 
to  "  Zweit  und  Pine." 

Ill 

I  know  that  the  same  thing  is  going  on  in  almost  all 
the  older  parts  of  the  United  States,  and  the  new  parts 
too — I  know  that  some  small  New  England  towns  can 
support  their  two  and  three  Polish  newspapers,  that 
New  York  swarms  with  people  who  talk  any  and  every 


464  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

language  under  the  sun  except  English,  and  can  boast,  if  it 
is  a  thing  to  boast  of,  more  Italians  than  Rome,  more  Jews 
than  Jerusalem;  that  San  Francisco  has  its  Chinatown, 
that  the  Middle  West  abounds  in  German  and  Swedish 
settlements — in  a  word,  I  know  that  everywhere  throughout 
the  country,  the  native  American  is  i^treating  before  this 
invasion  of  the  alien.  But  it  is  with  a  certain  difference  in 
Philadelphia.  Have  I  not  said  that  one  of  the  absurdities 
of  my  native  town — I  can  afford  to  call  them  absurdities 
because  I  love  them — is  that  for  the  Philadelphian  who 
looks  upon  himself  as  the  real  Philadelphian,  Philadelphia 
lies  between  the  Delaware  and  the  Schuylkill,  and  is 
bounded  on  the  north  by  INIarket  Street,  on  the  south  by 
Lombard;  that  in  the  ancient  rhyming  list  of  its  streets  he 
recognizes  only  the  line : 

"  Chestnut,  Walnut,  Spruce,  and  Pine  "  ? 
Now,  when  I  left  home  this  narrow  section  was 
threatening  to  grow  too  narrow  and  it  was  with  some 
difficulty  the  Philadelphian  kept  within  it.  L^p  till  then, 
however,  it  was  in  no  danger  except  from  his  own  increas- 
ing numbers.  The  tragedy  is  that  the  Russian  Jew  should 
have  descended  upon  just  this  section,  should  now,  not  so 
much  dispute  it  with  him,  as  oust  him  from  it — the  Russian 
Jew,  a  Jew  by  religion  but  not  by  race,  who  has  been 
found  impossible  in  every  country  on  the  Continent  of 
Europe  into  which  he  has  drifted,  so  impossible  when  that 
country  is  Holland  that  the  Jews  who  have  been  there  for 
centuries  collect  among  themselves  the  money  to  send 


..^JL.^.^L. 


CITY  HALL  FROM  THE  SCHUYLKILL 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  467 

him  post  haste  on  to  England  and  poor  America,  for  even 
the  Dutch  Jew  cannot  stand  the  Russian  Jew — and,  from 
what  I  have  heard,  neither  can  the  decent  Pennsylvania 
Jew  who  has  been  with  us  almost  from  the  beginning.  Other 
aliens  have  been  more  modest  and  set  up  their  slums  where 
they  interfere  less  with  Philadelphia  tradition.  I  cannot 
understand,  and  nobody  has  been  able  to  explain  to  me, 
why  the  Russian  Jew  was  allowed  to  push  his  way  in.  But 
the  indolent  never  see  the  thin  end  of  the  wedge,  and  there 
are  philanthropists  whose  philanthropy  for  the  people 
they  do  not  know  increases  in  direct  proportion  to  the  harm 
it  does  to  those  they  do  know.  I  was  told  more  than  once 
to  consider  what  Philadelphia  was  doing  for  the  Russian 
Jew,  to  remember  that  he  has  paid  America  the  compli- 
ment of  accepting  it  as  the  Promised  Land,  that  his  race 
in  America  has  produced  Mary  Antin,  and  to  see  for  my- 
self what  good  Americans  were  being  made  of  his  chil- 
dren. But  though  Philadelphia  may  one  day  blossom  like 
the  rose  with  Mary  Antins,  though  there  might  have  been 
an  incipient  patriot  in  every  one  of  the  small  Russian 
Jews  I  met  being  taken  in  batches  across  Independence 
Square  to  Independence  Hall  to  imbibe  patriotism  at  the 
fount,  I  could  not  help  considering  rather  what  the  Rus- 
sian Jew  is  just  now  doing  for  Philadelphia.  For  it  is  as 
plain  as  a  pipe  stem  to  anybody  with  eyes  to  see  that  the 
Philadelphians  to  whom  Philadelphia  originally  belonged 
are  being  pushed  by  the  Russian  Jew  out  of  the  only  part 
of  it  they  care  to  live  in. 


468  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

I  wondered  at  first  why  so  many  people  had  fled  to  the 
country,  why  so  many  signs  "  For  Sale  "  or  "  For  Rent  " 
were  to  be  seen  about  Spruce  and  Pine  and  Walnut 
Streets.  Various  reasons  were  given  me: — with  the  Law 
Courts  now  in  the  centre  of  the  town  and  the  new  Stock 
Exchange  at  Broad  and  Walnut,  and  stores  every- 
where, nobody  could  live  in  town;  the  noise  of  the 
trolleys  is  unbearable;  the  dirt  of  the  city  is  unhealthy; 
soft  coal  has  made  Philadelphia  grimier  than  London; 
the  motor  has  destroj^ed  distance; — excellent  reasons, 
all  of  them.  But  it  was  not  until  I  discovered  the  Rus- 
sian Jew  that  I  understood  the  most  important.  It  is 
the  Russian  Jew  who,  with  an  army  of  aliens  at  his  back 
— thousands  upon  thousands  of  Italians,  Slavs,  Lithuan- 
ians, a  fresh  emigration  of  negroes  from  the  South,  and 
statistics  alone  can  say  how  many  other  varieties — is  push- 
ing and  pushing  Philadelphians  out  of  the  town — first  up 
Spruce  Street,  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  Schuylkill,  then 
across  the  Schuylkill  into  the  suburbs,  eventually  to  be 
swept  from  the  suburbs  into  the  country,  until  who  can 
say  where  there  will  be  any  room  for  them  at  all?  With 
the  Russian  Jew's  genius  for  adapting  himself  to  Ameri- 
can institutions,  I  could  fancy  him  taking  possession  of, 
and  adding  indefinitely  to,  the  little  two-story  houses  that 
already  stretch  in  well-nigh  endless  rows  to  the  West  and 
the  North,  Germantown  and  West  Philadelphia  built 
over  beyond  recognition.  I  remember  when,  one  day  in  a 
trolley,  I  had  gone  for  miles  and  miles  between  these  rows 


^^  '^- 


CHESTNUT  STREET  BRIDGE 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY   471 

— each  little  house  with  the  same  front  yard,  the  same 
porch,  the  same  awning,  the  same  rocking-chairs — ^I  had  a 
horrible  waking  nightmare  in  which  I  saw  them  multiply- 
ing— as  the  alien  himself  multiplied  beyond  the  most 
ardent  dreams  of  Mr.  Roosevelt, — and  creeping  out 
further  and  further,  across  the  city  limits,  across  the  State, 
across  the  Middle  West,  across  the  prairies,  across  the 
Rockies,  across  the  Sierras,  until  at  last  they  joined  East 
to  West  in  one  unbroken  line — one  great,  unbroken,  un- 
lovely monument  to  the  enterprise  of  the  new  American, 
and  the  philanthropy  of  the  old:  while  only  the  Russian 
Jew  at  the  door  of  the  State  House,  like  Macaulay's  New 
Zealander  under  the  shadow  of  St.  Paul's,  remained  to 
muse  and  moralize  on  the  havoc  he  had  wrought. 

This  may  seem  a  trifle  fantastic,  but  I  should  find  it 
hard  to  give  an  idea  of  how  impossibly  fantastic  the  pre- 
vailing presence  of  the  alien  in  Philadelphia  appeared  to 
me.  To  be  sure,  we  had  our  aliens  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago,  But'they  were  mostly  Irish,  Germans,  Swedes.  The 
Italian  at  his  fruit-stall  was  as  yet  rather  the  picturesque 
exception,  and  I  can  remember  how,  not  very  long  before 
I  left  home,  the  whole  town  went  to  stare  at  the  first  im- 
portation of  Russian  Jews,  dumped  down  under  I  have 
forgotten  what  shelter,  as  if  they  were  curiosities  or  freaks 
from  Barnum's.  But  now  the  aliens  are  mostly  Latins, 
Slavs,  Orientals  who  do  not  fit  so  unobtrusively  into 
our  American  scheme  of  things,  and  who  come  from  the 
lowest  classes  in  their  own  countries,  so  ignorant  and  de- 


472  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

graded  most  of  them  that,  what  with  their  increasing 
numbers  and  our  new  negro  population  from  the  South, 
there  are  people  in  Pennsylvania  who  are  trying  to  intro- 
duce an  educational  test  at  the  polls — America  having 
learned  the  evil  of  universal  suffrage  just  as  England  is 
coquetting  with  it.  ^ 

IV 

The  rest  of  Philadelphia — the  rest  of  America,  for  that 
matter — may  be  accustomed  to  this  new  emigration  to  my 
town  as  well  as  to  all  parts  of  the  country.  But  I  had  not 
seen  the  latter-day  alien  coming  in  by  every  steamer,  and 
gradually,  almost  imperceptibly,  establishing  himself. 
The  advantage,  or  disadvantage,  of  staying  away  from 
home  so  long  is  that,  on  returning,  one  gets  the  net  result 
of  the  change  the  days  and  the  years  bring  with  them. 
Those  who  stay  at  home  are  broken  in  to  the  change  in  its 
initial  stages  and  can  accept  the  result  as  a  matter  of 
course.  I  could  not.  To  be  honest,  I  did  not  like  it.  I 
did  not  like  to  find  Philadelphia  a  foreign  town. 

I  did  not  like  to  find  Streets  where  the  name  on  almost 
every  store  is  Italian,  I  did  not  like  to  find  the  new  types 
of  negro,  like  savages  straight  from  the  heart  of  Africa 
some  of  them  looked,  who  are  disputing  South  Street  and 
Lombard  Street  and  that  disgraceful  bit  of  Locust  Street 
with  the  decent,  old-fashioned,  self-respecting  Philadel- 
phia darkies.  I  did  not  like  to  find  the  people  with 
foreign  manners — for  instance,  to  have  my  hand  kissed 


■%. 


CITY  HALL  FROM  SOUTH  BROAD  STREET 


;  lation 

ui   eiiu 


Thr  --'it  of  PMhf?p'-!hi^  "the  . 

this  new  - 
tow  n  as  svell  as  t< 


-day  a  steamer,  and 

If. 


TV. 


Svsnif  ; 


iiii       III' 
"»ir*->    III 


raaflTB  oaohh  Hxuoe  Mdfl'j  .uah  ytid 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  473 

for  a  tip  in  the  hotel  by  a  Lithuanian  chambermaid,  though 
I  should  add  that  in  a  month  she  had  grown  American 
enough  to  accept  the  same  tip  stoically  with  a  bare  "  Thank 
You."  I  did  not  like  to  find  the  foreigner  forcing  his  way 
not  only  into  the  Philadelphian's  houses,  the  Philadel- 
phian's  schools,  the  Philadelphian's  professions — profes- 
sions that  have  been  looked  upon  as  the  sacred  right  of  cer- 
tain Philadelphia  families  for  almost  a  couple  of  centuries, 
I  have  heard  all  about  his  virtues,  nobody  need  remind 
me  of  them;  I  know  that  he  is  carrying  off  everything 
at  the  University  so  that  rich  Jews  begin  to  think  they 
should  in  return  make  it  a  gift  or  bequest,  as  no  rich  Jew 
has  yet,  I  believe.  I  know  that  the  young  Philadelphian 
must  give  up  his  sports  and  his  gaieties  if  he  can  hope  to 
compete  with  the  young  Russian  Jew  who  never  allows 
himself  any  recreation  on  the  road  to  success — and  per- 
haps this  won't  do  the  young  Philadelphian  any  harm.  I 
know  that  if  the  Russian  Jew  keeps  on  studying  law,  the 
Philadelphia  lawyer  will  be  before  long  as  extinct  as  the 
dodo — a  probability  that  if  it  wakes  up  the  Philadelphia 
lawyer  may  have  its  uses.  All  this,  and  much  besides,  I 
know — also,  incidentally,  I  might  add  the  fact  that  the 
Russian  Jew,  who  is  not  unintelligent,  has  mastered  in  a 
very  short  time  the  possibilities  of  arson  and  bankruptcy 
as  investments.  But  if  there  were  no  other  side  to  his 
virtues — and  of  course  there  is  that  other  side  too — I  should 
not  like  to  think  of  the  new  Philadelphian  that  is  to  come 
out  of  this  incredible  mixture  of  Russian  Jews  and  count- 


474  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

less  other  aliens  as  little  like  us  in  character  and  tradition. 

The  new  Philadelphian  may  be  a  finer  creature  far 
than  in  my  hopes  for  him,  finer  far  than  the  old  Philadel- 
phian I  have  known — but  then  he  will  not  be  that  old  Phila- 
delphian whom  I  do  not  want  to  lose  and  whom  it  would 
be  a  pity  to  lose  in  a  country  for  whieh,  ever  since  Penn 
pointed  the  way  to  the  constitution  of  the  United  States,  he 
has  probably  accomplished  more  than  any  other  citizen. 

Personally,  I  might  as  well  say  that  I  do  not  believe 
he  will  be  a  finer  creature.  It  seems  to  me  that  he  is  doing 
away  with  the  old  American  idea  of  levelling  up  and  is 
bent  on  the  levelling  down  process  that  is  going  on  all  over 
Europe.  And  so  foreign  is  he  making  us,  that  I  would 
not  think  J.  very  far  wrong  in  declaring  himself  the  only 
real  American  left,  if  only  he  would  include  me  with  him. 


■'''°'"^£fe:i. 


THE  NARROW  STREET 


CHAPTER  XIX:  PHILADELPHIA  AFTER 
A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY— CONTINUED 

I 

IT  was  not  only  the  change  that  oppressed  me  those 
first  days  of  my  return.  As  bewildering,  as  dis- 
couraging, were  the  signs  everywhere  of  the  horrible 
haste  with  which  it  has  been  brought  about:  a  haste  for- 
eign to  the  Philadelphia  habit.  But  the  aliens  pouring 
into  Philadelphia  have  increased  its  population  at  such  a 
prodigious  rate  that  it  has  been  obliged  to  grow  too 
prodigiously  fast  to  meet  or  to  adapt  itself  to  the  new 
conditions  without  the  speed  that  does  not  belong  to  it. 

I  had  left  it  a  big,  prosperous,  industrial  town — Bald- 
win's, Cramp's,  Kensington  and  Germantown  mills  all  in 
full  swing — but  it  carried  off  its  bigness,  prosperity,  and 
industry  with  its  old  demure  and  restful  airs  of  a  country 
town.  The  old-fashioned,  hard-working,  Philadelphia 
business  man  could  still  dine  at  four  o'clock  and  spend  the 
rest  of  the  afternoon  looking  out  of  the  window  for  the 
people  who  rarely  passed  and  the  things  that  never  hap- 
pened— nobody  would  be  free  to  dine  at  four  now-a-days, 
nobody  would  have  the  leisure  to  sit  at  any  hour  looking 
out  of  the  window,  except  perhaps  the  Philadelphia  club- 
man who  clings  to  that  amiable  pastime,  as  he  does,  so 
far  successfully,  to  his  Club  house,  threatened  on  every 

477 


478  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

side  as  it  is  by  the  advance  of  the  sky-scraper.  The  old- 
fashioned  busy  Philadelphia  crowds,  as  I  remember  them, 
could  still  take  their  time  in  the  streets,  so  that  I  remember, 
too,  my  friend,  George  Steevens'  astonishment  because  a 
passer-by  he  thanked  for  information  could  linger  to  say 
"  You  are  very  welcome."  The  old-fashioned  Philadel- 
phia business,  going  on  at  a  pace  that  only  New  York  and 
Chicago  could  beat,  was  still  accomplished  with  so  little 
fuss  that  the  rest  of  America  laughed  at  Philadelphia  for 
its  slowness  and  sleepiness,  and  told  those  old  time-worn 
stories  that  have  passed  into  folk-lore.  It  was  just  this 
that  gave  Philadelphia  such  a  distinct  character  of  its 
own — that  it  could  be  laughed  at  for  slowness  and  sleepi- 
ness by  the  other  towns,  and  all  the  while  be  sleepy  and 
slow  to  such  good  purpose  as  to  make  itself  into  one  of  the 
most  prosperous  and  influential  in  the  country:  to  be  able 
to  work  at  the  American  pace  and  yet  preserve  its  dignity 
and  sedateness. 

But  the  old  stories  have  lost  what  little  point  they  had. 
Philadelphia  does  not  look  slow  and  sleepy  any  longer. 
Things  have  changed,  indeed,  when  a  modern  traveller  like 
Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  can  speak  of  "  spacious  gaiety  "  in 
connection  with  Philadelphia — ^with  its  spacious  dulness 
the  earlier  traveller  was  more  apt  to  be  impressed.  At  last, 
however,  it  has  given  up  its  country-town  airs  for  the 
airs  of  the  big  town  it  is — ^given  up  the  calmness  that  was 
its  chief  characteristic  for  the  hurry-flurry  of  the  ordinary 
American  town.     And  there  is  scarcely  a  Philadelphian 


t^-^.^^^'^' 


THE  MARKET  STREET  ELEVATED  AT  THE  DELAWARE  END 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY   481 

who  regrets  it,  that  is  the  saddest  part  of  it — scarcely  a 
Philadelphian  who  does  not  rejoice  that  Philadelphia  is 
getting  to  be  like  New  York. 

I  think,  of  all  the  innovations,  this  was  the  one  that 
distressed  me  most,  though  I  could  understand  the  diffi- 
culty of  calm  in  the  face  of  the  multitude  of  new  housing 
and  traffic  problems  it  has  had  to  tackle,  at  a  rate  and  with 
a  speed  that  the  Philadelphian,  left  to  himself,  would  never 
have  imposed  upon  it.  Somehow,  it  has  had  to  keep  on 
putting  up  those  rows  of  little  two-story  houses  in  suffi- 
cient numbers  to  shelter  the  too  rapidly  increasing  popula- 
tion if  it  is  to  maintain  its  reputation  as  the  City  of 
Homes;  somehow,  it  has  had  to  provide  subways,  and 
elevateds,  and  new  suburban  lines  with  no  level  crossings, 
and  new  central  Stations  and  Terminals,  and  big  trolley 
cars  out  of  all  proportion  to  Philadelphia's  narrow  streets, 
and  taxis  too  dear  for  any  but  the  millionaire  to  drive  in,  if 
the  too-rapidly  increasing  crowds  are  to  be  got  to  work  and 
back  again;  somehow,  new  bridges  have  had  to  cross  the 
Schuylkill,  new  streets  have  had  to  be  laid  out,  so  many 
new  things  have  had  to  be  begun  and  done  in  the  too- 
rapidly  growing  town,  that  there  is  small  chance  and  less 
time  for  it  to  take  them  calmly  or,  alas!  to  keep  itself 
clean  and  tidy. 

II 

In  my  memory  Philadelphia  was  a  model  of  cleanli- 
ness under  a  clean  sky,  free  of  the  smoke  that  the  use  of 
soft  coal  has  brought  with  it.    Every  Saturday  every  ser- 

31 


^M  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

vant  gill — "  maid,"  Philadelphia  calls  her  now — turned 
out  with  mops  and  buckets  and  hose,  for  such  a  washing  up 
of  the  front  for  a  week  that,  until  the  next  Saturday, 
Philadelj)hia  could  not  look  dirty  if  it  tried.  But  I  do  not 
believe  that  a  legion  of  servant  girls,  with  all  the  mops, 
buckets,  and  hose  in  the  world,  could  ever  wash  Philadel- 
phia clean  again,  to  such  depths  of  dirt  has  it  fallen.  It 
coidd  not  have  been  more  of  a  disgrace  to  its  citizens  when 
Franklin  deplored  the  shocking  condition  of  its  streets, 
especially  in  wet  weather,  or  when  Washington  had  to 
wade  through  mud  to  get  to  the  theatre  where  he  found 
his  recreation.  It  has  become  actually  the  Filthydelphia 
somebody  once  called  it  in  jest.  Not  even  in  the  little 
Spanish  and  Italian  towns  whose  dirt  the  American  de- 
plores, have  I  seen  such  streets — all  rivers  and  pools  and 
lakes  w^ien  it  rains,  ankle-deep  in  dust  when  it  is  dry, 
papers  flying  loose,  corners  choked  with  dirt,  tins  of  ashes 
and  garbage  standing  at  the  gutter  side  all  day  long — 
even  London,  that  I  used  to  think  the  dirtiest  of  dirty 
towns,  knows  how  to  order  its  garbage  better  than  that. 
We  Americans  are  supposed  to  be  long-suffering,  to  en- 
dure ahnost  anything  until  the  crisis  comes.  But  I  thought 
that  crisis  had  long  since  come  in  the  Philadelphia  streets. 
Everybody  agreed  with  me,  and  I  was  assured  that  a 
corrupt  government  having  been  got  out  and  a  reform 
government  got  in,  already  there  was  tremendous  talk  of 
schemes  for  garbage — bags  to  be  hauled  off  full  of  gar- 


V 


1    i 


X^STxX^-tlSiL 


THK  RAILROAD  BRIDGES  AT  FALLS  OF  SCHUYLKILL 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  485 

bage,  dust-tight  on  the  way,  and  hauled  back  empty,  old 
paper  to  be  bought  up  by  the  city  so  that  no  thrifty  citizen 
would  throw  a  scrap  of  paper  into  the  street — and  as 
tremendous  talk  of  experiments  in  garbage,  ten  patriotic 
citizens  promising  to  contribute  one  thousand  dollars  each 
to  make  them.  I  was  assured  also  that  the  reform  Mayor 
has  done  his  best  and  struggled  valiantly  against  the  evil, 
but  unfortunately  it  is  not  he  alone  who  can  vote  the  money 
for  a  wholesale  spring-cleaning.  It  occurred  to  me  that,  in 
the  meanwhile,  we  might  be  better  off  if  we  returned  with 
much  less  expense,  to  the  hogs  that  were  "  the  best  of 
scavengers  "  when  William  Cobbett  visited  Philadelphia. 
Or,  at  no  more  than  the  cost  of  a  ticket  to  New  York,  the 
reformers  might  at  least  learn  how  to  keep  garbage  tins 
off  the  front  steps  of  inoffensive,  tax-paying  citizens  at 
five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  when  they  ask  their  friends  to 
drink  tea  in  that  English  fashion  which  is  as  novel  in  my 
Philadelphia  as  the  difficulty  with  the  garbage. 

My  own  opinion  was  that  Philadelphia  had  lost  its 
head  over  the  magnitude  of  the  task  before  it.  In  no  other 
way  could  I  account  for  the  recklessness  with  which  old 
streets  were  torn  up  for  blocks  and  repaired  by  inches; 
new  streets  built  and  horrible  stagnant  pools  left  on  their 
outskirts — the  suburbs  quite  as  bad  in  this  respect,  so  bad 
that  I  understand  associations  of  citizens  are  formed  to 
do  what  the  authorities  don't  seem  able  to;  boulevards 
planned  and  held  up  when  half  finished,  a  monumental 


ki 


486  OIK  PHILADELPHIA 

entrance  designed  to  the  most  beautiful  Park  in  the  worhl 
and,  on  its  either  side,  silly  little  wooden  pergolas  set  up  to 
try  the  effect,  by  the  dethroned  government  1  believe,  and. 
though  nobody,  from  one  end  of  the  town  to  the  other, 
approves,  neither  the  time  nor  the  money  is  foimd  to  pull 
them  down  again — neither  the  time  nor  the  money  found 
for  anything  but  dirt  and  untidiness. 

Ill 

The  people,  their  manners,  their  life, — everything 
seemed  to  me  to  have  been  caught  in  this  mad  whirlwind 
of  change  and  haste.  The  crowds  in  the  street  were  not 
the  same,  had  forgotten  the  meaning  of  repose  and  leisure- 
liness;  had  at  last  given  in  to  the  American  habit  of 
leaving  everything  imtil  the  last  moment  and  then  rushing 
when  there  was  no  occasion  for  rush,  and  pretending  to 
hustle  so  that  not  one  man  or  woman  I  met  could  have 
spared  a  second  to  say  "  Yoin*  are  welcome  "  for  any- 
body's "  Thank  you,"  or,  for  that  matter,  to  provide  the 
information  for  anybody's  thanks; — indeed,  these  crowds 
seemed  to  me  to  have  mastered  their  new  role  with  such 
thoroughness  that  to-day  the  visitor  from  abroad  will  carry 
away  the  same  idea'  of  Philadelphia  as  Arnold  Bennett, 
Avho,  during  his  sojourn  there,  never  ceased  to  marvel  at  its 
liveliness. 

And  the  crowds  have  migrated  from  the  old  haunts — 
every  sign  of  life  now  gone  from  Third  Street  and  round 
about  the  Stock  Exchange,  where  nobody  now  is  ever  in 


kh0 : 


THK  PARKWAY  PKRCOl-AS 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY   489 

a  hurry — carts  and  cars  going  at  snail's  pace,  the  whole 
place  looking  as  if  time  did  not  count — the  old  town  busi- 
ness quarter  deserted  for  Market  Street  and  Broad  Street 
round  the  City  Hall. 

And  the  crowds  do  not  get  about  in  the  same  way — 
no  slow,  leisurely  ride  in  the  horse-car  to  a  Depot  in  the 
wilds  of  Frankford,  or  at  Ninth  and  Green,  on  the  way 
to  the  suburbs,  but  a  leap  on  a  trolley,  or  a  rush  through 
thronged  streets  to  the  Terminal  at  Twelfth  and  Market, 
to  the  Station  at  Broad  and  Market.  And  it  was  another 
sign  of  how  Philadelphia  had  "  moved  "  since  the  old  days 
when,  in  place  of  the  old  horse-car,  which  I  could  rely  upon 
to  go  in  a  straight  line  from  one  end  of  the  long  street  to 
the  other,  I  took  the  new  trolley  and  it  twisted  and  turned 
with  me  until  the  exception  was  to  arrive  just  where  I 
expected  to,  or,  if  I  only  stayed  in  it  long  enough,  not  to 
be  landed  in  some  remote  country  town  where  I  had  no 
intention  of  going.  I  have  been  told  the  story  of  the  stay- 
at-home  Philadelphian  as  puzzled  as  I,  who  was  promised 
by  a  motorman,  as  uncertain  as  she  where  he  was  going, 
that  at  least  he  could  give  her  a  "  nice  ride  through  a 
handsome  part  of  the  town."  Worse  still,  the  trolley  did 
not  stop  at  the  corners  where  the  car  used  to  stop  so  that  I, 
a  native  Philadelphian,  had  to  be  told  where  to  wait  for  it 
by  an  interloper  with  a  foreign  accent.  Nor  was  it  crowded 
at  the  same  hours  as  the  car  used  to  be,  so  that  going  out  to 
dinner  in  a  Walnut  Street  trolley  I  could  sit  comfortably 
and  not  be  obliged  to  hang  on  to  a  strap,  with  everybody 


490  OIH  PHILADELPHIA 

who  got  in  or  out  helping  to  rub  the  freshness  from  my  best 
evening  gown,  which  would  have  been  my  fate  in  the  old 
days. 

And  the  crowds  were  not  managed  in  the  old  way — the 
ordinary  policeman  used  to  do  his  best  to  keep  out  of 
sight,  and  here  was  the  mounted  policeman  prancing  about 
everywhere,  and,  at  congested  corners,  adding  to  the  con- 
fusion by  filling  up  what  little  space  the  overgrown  trolleys 
left  in  the  narrow  streets.  I  am  not  sure  that  it  was  not 
this  mounted  policeman — unless  it  was  the  coloured  police- 
men and  the  coloured  postmen — I  had  most  difficulty  in 
getting  accustomed  to.  I  came  upon  him  every  day,  or 
almost  every  hour,  with  something  of  a  new  shock.  Can 
this  be  really  I,  1  would  say  to  myself  when  I  saw  him  in 
his  splendour,  can  this  be  really  Philadelphia? 

IV 

The  difference  I  deplored  was  not  confined  to  the 
crowds  I  did  not  know;  it  was  no  less  marked  in  the  people 
I  did  know,  in  their  standards  and  outlook,  in  the  way 
they  lived.  It  is  hard  to  say  what  struck  me  most,  though 
nothing  more  obviously  the  first  few  days  than  that  flight 
to  the  suburbs  which  had  left  such  visible  proofs  as  those 
signs  "  For  Rent  "  and  "  For  Sale  "  everywhere  in  the 
streets  where  I  was  most  at  home — a  flight  necessitated 
perhaps  by  the  inroads  of  the  alien,  but  only  made  possible 
by  the  annihilation  of  space  due  to  the  motor-car. 

Once,  when  a  Philadelphian  set  up  a  carriage,  it  was 


MARKET  STRKKT  W  KST  OK  THK  SCHUYLKILL 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY   493 

the  announcement  to  Philadelphia  that  he  had  earned  the 
fifty  thousand  dollars  which  fulfilled  his  ideal  of  a  fortune. 
In  my  day  Fairman  Rogers'  four-in-hand  was  the  limit, 
and  but  few  Philadelphians  had  the  money  and  the  reck- 
lessness to  rival  him.  Now  the  Philadelphian  does  not 
have  to  earn  anything  at  all  before  he  sets  up  his  motor- 
car, and  it  is  the  announcement  of  nothing  except  that  he 
is  bound  to  keep  in  the  swim.  Our  children  begin  where 
we  leave  off,  as  one  of  my  contemporaries  said  to  me. 
Everybody  has  a  motor-car.  Everybody  who  can  has  one 
in  London,  I  know,  and  there  also  the  signs  "  To  Let  " 
and  "  For  Sale  "  in  such  regions  as  Kensington  and  Bays- 
water  have  for  some  time  back  explained  to  me  the  way  it 
has  turned  London  life  upside  down.  But  in  Philadelphia 
not  merely  everybody  who  can,  but  everybody  who  can't 
has  one,  and  the  Philadelphian  would  not  do  without  it,  if 
he  had  to  mortgage  his  house  as  its  price.  I  remember 
how  incredulous  I  was,  one  of  my  first  Sunday  evenings 
at  home,  when  I  was  dining  with  friends  in  the  crowded- 
to-suiFocation  dining-room  at  the  Bala  Country  Club  and 
was  given  as  an  excuse  for  being  rushed  from  my  untasted 
coffee  to  catch  an  inconsiderately  early  last  train,  that  ours 
was  probably  the  only  dinner  party  in  the  room  without  a 
car  to  take  us  back  to  town.  But  from  that  evening  on  I 
had  no  chance  for  incredulity,  my  own  movements  begin- 
ning to  revolve  round  the  motor-car.  If  I  was  asked  to 
dinner  and  lunch  at  a  distance  to  which  nobody  would 
have  thought  of  dragging  me  by  train  in  the  old  days,  a 


494  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

motor  was  sent  to  whirl  me  out  in  no  time  at  all.  If  1  went 
into  a  far  suburb  for  an  afternoon  visit,  instead  of  coming 
soberly  back  to  town  on  my  return  ticket,  I  would  take  a 
short  cut  by  flying  over  half  the  near  country,  often  in  the 
car  of  people  I  had  never  seen  before,  as  the  most  con- 
venient route  to  the  hotel.  All  Philadelphia  life  is  regu- 
lated by  the  motor-car.  It  makes  a  ball  or  a  tea  or  a  dinner 
ten  miles  away  as  near  as  one  just  round  the  corner  was  in 
my  time,  and  so  half  the  gaiety  is  transferred  to  the 
suburbs  and  the  suburban  country,  and,  to  my  siu'prise,  I 
found  girls  still  going  to  dances  at  midsummer. 

And  the  motor  has  made  club  life  for  women  indis- 
pensable. The  woman  who  comes  up  to  town  in  her  car 
must  have  a  Club,  and  there  is  the  Acorn  Club  in  Walnut 
Street,  The  Xew  Century,  and  the  College  and  Civic 
Clubs,  jointly  housed  at  Thirteenth  and  Spruce,  and 
more  clubs  in  other  streets,  probably,  which  it  was  not 
my  privilege  to  be  invited  to;  all,  to  judge  by  the  Acorn, 
with  luxurious  drawing-  and  dining-  and  smoking-  and 
dressing-  and  bed-rooms,  and  women  coming  and  going 
as  if  they  had  lived  in  clubs  all  their  lives,  when  a 
short  quarter  of  a  century  before  there  had  not  been  one 
for  them  to  see  the  inside  of.  And  for  men  and  women 
both,  the  car  has  brought  within  their  reach  those  amazing 
Country  Clubs  that  have  sprung  up  in  my  absence.  I  had 
read  of  Country  Clubs  in  American  novels  and  short 
stories,  I  had  seen  them  on  the  stage  in  American  plays, 
but  I  had  never  paused  to  think  of  them  as  realities  in 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY   495 

Philadelphia  until  I  was  actually  taken  to  the  Bala  and 
Huntington  Valley  Clubs,  and  until  I  ate  their  admirable 
dinners- — at  Bala,  with  the  crowds  and  in  the  light  and  to 
the  music  that  would  have  made  me  feel  I  was  in  a  London 
restaurant,  had  it  not  been  for  the  inevitable  cocktail — 
and  imtil  I  saw  with  my  own  eyes  the  luxurious  houses  so 
comfortably  and  correctly  appointed — even  to  brass  bed- 
room candlesticks  on  a  table  in  the  second-story  hall,  just 
as  in  an  old-fashioned  English  inn,  though  as  far  as  I  could 
make  out  there  was  excellent  electric  light  everywhere — 
until  I  also  saw  with  my  own  eyes  the  trim  lawns,  and 
gardens,  and  the  wide  view  over  the  delicate  American 
landscape,  and  women  in  the  tennis  courts,  and  the  men 
bringing  out  their  ponies  for  polo,  and  the  players  dotted 
over  the  golf  course. 

And  whether  the  Country  Clubs  have  created  the 
sport  or  the  sport  has  created  the  Country  Clubs,  I  cannot 
say,  but  in  the  increased  attention  to  sport  I  was  con- 
fronted with  another  difference  as  startling.  Philadel- 
phia, I  know,  has  always  been  given  to  sport.  It  hunted 
and  raced  and  fished  before  time  and  conscience  allowed 
most  of  the  other  Colonists  in  the  North  the  chance  to 
amuse  themselves  out-of-doors,  or  indoors  either,  poor 
things!  And  the  old  sports,  barring  the  least  civilized 
like  bull-baiting  and  cock-fighting,  were  kept  up,  and  are 
kept  up,  and  had  their  Clubhouses,  which,  in  some  cases, 
have  survived.  But,  in  my  time,  these  sports  had  been 
limited  to  the  few  who  had  country  houses  in  the  right  dis- 


496  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

tricts  or  the  leisure  for  the  gentlemanly  pursuit  of  foxes 
and  fishes,  and  their  clubs  were  primitive  compared  to  the 
palatial  Country  Clubs,  whose  luxury  women  now  share 
with  men.  If  j^ou  were  in  the  hunting  or  fishing  set, 
you  heard  all  about  it;  but  if  you  were  not,  you  heard 
little  enough.  But  you  did  not  hav6  to  be  in  any  set 
to  keep  up  with  the  great  Philadelphia  game  of  cricket, 
which  was  popular,  exclusive  as  the  players  in  their 
team  might  be — all  Philadelphia  that  did  not  play  scrupu- 
lously going  on  the  proper  occasions  to  the  Germantown 
Cricket  Ground  to  watch  all  Philadelphia  that  did. 
The  one  alternative  as  popular  was  the  pastime  of  row- 
ing, the  exclusiveness  here  in  the  rowing  men's  choice 
among  the  Clubs  with  the  little  boating  clubhouses  on 
the  Schuylkill  where  boats  could  be  stowed.  And  now? 
The  cricket  goes  on,  as  gentlemanly  and  correct  a 
pastime  as  ever.  And  the  boating  goes  on,  but  with  a 
delightful  exclusive  old  Colonial  house,  for  one  Club  at 
least,  hidden  in  thickets  of  the  Park  where  the  stranger 
might  pass  within  a  stone's  throw  and  never  discover  it, 
but  where  the  boating  party  can  dine  with  a  privacy  and  a 
sumptuousness  undreamed  of  at  Belmont,  where  boating 
parties  dined  in  my  young  days.  And,  in  addition,  time 
has  been  prodigal  with  golf  and  tennis  and  polo:  women, 
who  had  begun  tennis  in  my  time,  now  beginning  golf, 
games  which,  I  might  as  well  admit,  I  have  no  use  for 
and  can  therefore  say  little  about.  And  I  am  told  that 
the   University   foot-ball   matches   are   among  the   most 


MANHEIM  CRICKET  GROUND 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY   499 

important  and  lavishly  patronized  social  functions  of  the 
year.  And  in  town  is  the  big  Racquets  Club,  in  a  fine 
new  building,  big  enough  to  shelter  any  number  of  sports 
besides.  And  the  Natatorium,  in  moving  from  the  un- 
pretentious premises  in  South  Broad  Street,  where  it  has 
left  its  old  building  and  name,  to  the  marble  palace 
that  was  once  George  W.  Childs's — Oh,  the  sacrilege! 
the  house  where  his  emperors  and  princes  and  lords  and 
authors  were  entertained, — has  converted  the  swimming 
lesson  into  the  luxury  of  sport.  And  all  told,  so  many, 
and  so  exhaustive,  and  so  universal  are  the  provisions  for 
sport  that  I  might  have  believed  the  Philadelphian  had 
nothing  in  the  world  to  do,  save  to  invent  amusements  to 
help  him  through  his  empty  hours. 

And,  apparently,  it  is  to  provide  for  the  same  empty 
hours  that  those  elaborate  lunch  places  have  multiplied  on 
Chestnut  Street,  some  delightful  where  you  feast  as  only 
Philadelphia  can,  some  horrible  where  you  sit  on  high 
stools  at  counters  and  fight  for  your  food ;  that  little  quiet 
discreet  tea-places  have  sprung  up  in  side  streets;  that 
gilded  restaiH'ants,  boasting  they  reproduce  the  last  Lon- 
don fads  and  fashions,  have  succeeded  the  old  no  restau- 
rant at  all;  that  hotels  as  big  and  strident  as  if  they  had 
strayed  off  Fifth  Avenue  increase  in  number  year  by 
year,  culminating  in  the  Adelphia,  the  latest  giant,  which 
I  have  not  seen;  that  the  old  poky  hotels  of  my  day  have 
branched  out  in  roof  gardens  where  on  hot  summer  even- 
ings you  can  sit  up  among  the  sky-scrapers,  a  near  neigh- 


500  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

hour  to  William  Penn  on  his  tower,  and  get  whatever  air 
stirs  over  the  red-hot  furnace  of  Philadelphia;  that  a  huge 
new  hotel  has  appeared  up  Broad  Street  where  it  seems  the 
Philadelphian  sometimes  goes  with  the  feeling  of  ad- 
venture with  which  he  once  descended  upon  Logan  Square. 
Even  business  hours  are  broken  into ;  the  lunch  of  a  dozen 
oysters  or  a  sandwich  snatched  up  anywhere  has  gone  out 
of  fashion;  the  chop,  in  the  Philadelphia  imitation  of  a 
London  chop-house  that  seemed  luxurious  in  my  Father's 
day,  has  become  far  too  simple ;  and  disaster  was  predicted 
to  me  for  the  Stock  Exchange  by  a  pessimistic  member 
who  knew  that,  from  the  new  building  that  has  followed 
the  Courts  to  the  centre  of  the  town,  brokers  will  be  run- 
ning over  to  lunch  at  the  Bellevue  and  to  incapacitate 
themselves  more  or  less  for  the  rest  of  the  day,  and  busi- 
ness will  go  on  drifting,  as  it  has  begun  to,  to  New  York 
and  will  all  be  done  by  telephone.  And  as  if  the  feasting 
were  not  enough  of  a  pastime,  everywhere  lunches,  teas 
and  dinners  are  served  to  the  sound  of  music,  so  that  dis- 
traction and  diversion  may  be  counted  upon  without  the 
effort  to  talk  for  them.  When  I  was  young,  the  best 
Philadelphia  could  do  in  the  way  of  combining  music  and 
eating — or  principally  drinking — ^was  at  the  Maennerehor 
Garden  at  Ninth  and  Green,  where  a  pretzel  might  be  had 
with  a  glass  of  beer,  or  a  sherry  cobbler,  or  a  mint  julep — 
"  high-balls  "  had  not  been  heard  of — and  the  Philadelphia 
girl  who  went,  though  it  was  under  the  irreproachable 
charge   of  her  brother,   could   feel  that   she  was   doing 


DOCK  STREET  AND  THE  EXCHANGE 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY   503 

something  very  shocking  and  compromising.  But  in  the 
new  Philadelphia,  it  is  music  whenever  the  Philadelphian 
eats  or  drinks  in  public,  which  seems  to  be  next  to  always. 
It  may  be  said  that  these  are  harmless  innovations,  part 
of  the  change  in  town  life  as  lived  in  any  other  town  as 
big.  But  the  marvel  to  me  was  their  conquest  of  Phila- 
delphia, the  town  that  used  to  pride  itself  on  not  being  like 
other  towns,  and  there  they  exaggerated  themselves  in  my 
eyes  into  nothing  short  of  revolution.  The  craving  for 
novelty — that  was  at  the  root  of  it  all:  of  the  restlessness, 
the  willingness  to  do  what  the  old-fashioned  Philadelphian 
would  rather  have  been  seen  dead  than  caught  doing, 
of  the  deliberate  break  with  tradition.  Xothing  now  can 
be  left  2)eacefully  as  it  was.  I  felt  the  foundations  of 
the  world  crumble  when  I  heard  that  the  Dancing  Class 
has  taken  new  quarters  over  in  Horticultural  Hall  and  the 
Assembly  in  the  Bellevue,  that  Philadelphia  consents  to 
go  up  Broad  Street  for  its  opera,  quieting  its  conscience 
by  the  compromise  of  going  in  carriages  and  motors  and 
never  on  foot.  There  surely  was  the  end  of  the  old 
Philadelphia,  the  real  Philadelphia.  And  it  made  matters 
no  better  to  be  assured  that  so  rapidly  does  Philadelphia 
move  with  the  times  that  the  Philadelphian  who  stays  away 
from  home,  or  who  is  in  mourning,  for  a  year  or  so,  finds  on 
coming  back,  or  out  of  retirement,  that  Philadelphia  so- 
ciety has  been  as  completely  transformed  in  the  mean- 
while as  Philadelphia  streets.  Xor  did  it  make  matters 
better   to    discover    the    different    prices    that    different 


hi 


504  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

standards  have  brought  in  their  train.  I  could  see  the  new 
pace  at  which  hfe  in  pubhc  is  set,  I  heard  much  of  the 
new  pace  set  for  it  in  private — servants'  wages  prohibitive 
according  to  old  ways  of  thinking,  provisions  risen  to  a 
scale  beyond  belief,  every-day  existence  as  dear  as  in  Lon- 
don— in  Philadelphia,  as  elsewhere,  people  threatened  with 
ruin  from,  not  the  high  cost  of  living,  but  the  cost  of  high 
living. 

V 
And  the  change  is  not  simply  in  the  outward  panoply, 
in  the  parade  of  life,  it  is  in  the  point  of  view,  in  the  new 
attitude  toward  life — a  change  that  impressed  itself  upon 
me  in  a  thousand  and  one  ways.  I  have  already  referred  to 
my  astonishment  at  finding  Philadelphia  occupjdng  itself 
with  art  and  literature.  But  really  there  is  nothing  with 
which  it  does  not  occupy  itself.  Universal  knowledge  has 
come  into  fashion  and  it  makes  me  tired  just  to  think  of 
the  struggle  to  keep  up  to  it.  Once  the  Philadelphian 
thought  he  knew  everything  that  was  necessary  to  know 
if  he  could  tell  you  who  every  other  Philadelphian's 
grandfather  was.  But  now  he,  or  I  should  say  she — -for 
it  is  the  women  who  rule  when  it  comes  to  fashion — is  not 
content  unless  she  knows  everjiihing,  or  thinks  she  does, 
from  the  first  chapter  in  Genesis  to  the  latest  novelty  on 
the  Boulevards,  the  latest  club  gossip  in  Pall  Mall.  And 
how  she  can  talk  about  it!  I  have  made  so  many  confes- 
sions in  these  pages  that  it  will  do  no  harm  to  add  one 
more  to  their  number,  and  to  own  mv  discomfiture  when, 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  505 

on  finding  myself  one  of  a  group  of  Philadelphia  women, 
I  have  been  stunned  into  silence,  in  my  ignorance  re- 
duced to  shame  and  confusion  by  their  encyclopedic, 
Baedeker-Murray  information  and  their  volubility  in  im- 
parting it.  It  is  wonderful  to  know  so  much,  but,  as  the 
philosopher  says,  what  a  comfort,  to  be  sure,  a  dull  person 
may  be  at  times. 

On  the  whole,  it  was  the  new  interest  in  politics  that 
most  astonished  me.  That  just  when  Philadelphia  has 
plunged  into  incredible  frivolity,  it  should  develop  an 
interest  in  problems  it  calmly  shirked  in  its  days  of 
sobriety — that  is  astounding  if  you  will.  When  I  left 
home,  politics  were  still  beneath  the  active  interest  of  the 
Philadelphian — still  something  to  steer  clear  from,  to  keep 
one's  hands  clean  of.  A  man  who  would  rather  live  on 
the  public  than  do  an  honest  day's  work,  was  my  Father's 
definition  of  the  politician.  I  remember  what  a  crank  we 
all  thought  one  of  my  Brother's  friends  who  amused  him- 
self by  being  elected  to  the  Common  Council.  It  was  not 
at  all  good  form — who  of  self-respect  could  so  far  forget 
himself  as  to  become  part,  however  humble,  of  the  ma- 
chine, a  hail-fellow-well-met  among  the  Bosses  and  liable 
to  be  greeted  as  Bill  or  Tom  or  Jim  by  the  postman  on  his 
rounds  or  the  policeman  at  the  corner.  Better  far  let  the 
city  be  abominably  governed  and  the  tax-payers  outra- 
geously robbed,  than  to  submit  to  such  indignities.  The 
Philadelphian  who  realized  what  he  owed  to  himself  and 
his  position  was  superior  to  politics.     But  he  is  not  any 


50G  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

longer,  I  found  him  up  to  his  eyes  in  politics — taking  the 
responsibility  of  niiniicipal  reform,  waging  war  against 
state  corruption,  running  meetings  for  Roosevelt  and 
Progress  at  the  last  Presidential  election.  And  not  only 
this.  The  women  are  sharing  his  labours — the  women 
who  of  old  hardly  knew  the  meaning  bf  politics,  might 
have  been  puzzled  even  to  know  how  to  spell  the  un- 
familiar word — they  too  are  busy  with  civic  reform, 
and  turn  a  watchful  but  unavailing  eye  on  the  garbage, 
and  run  settlements  in  the  slums,  and  qualify  as  police- 
men, and  demand  the  vote — parade  for  it,  hold  public 
meetings  for  it,  hob-nob  with  coloured  women  for  it, 
run  after  the  discredited  English  militant  for  it, — and  talk 
politics  on  any  and  every  occasion.  There  were  days  when 
I  heard  nothing  but  politics — politics  at  lunch,  politics  at 
tea,  politics  at  dinner — think  of  it!  politics  at  a  Philadel- 
phia dinner  party,  politics  over  the  Soft  Shell  Crabs  and 
the  Shad  and  the  Broiled  Chicken  and  the  Ice-cream  from 
Sautter's  and  the  Madeira!  It  is  better  and  wdser  and 
more  improving,  no  doubt,  than  the  old  vapid  talk — but 
then  the  old  vapid  talk  was  part  of  my  Philadelphia,  and 
my  Philadelphia  was  what  I  w^anted  to  come  back  to. 


THE  LOCO.MOTIVK  YARD,  WEST  PHILADELPHIA 


CHAPTER  XX:  PHILADELPHIA  AFTER  A 
QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY— CONTINUED 

I 

OF  course  I  resented  all  the  changes  and,  equally  of 
I  course,  it  was  unreasonable  that  I  should.  I  had 
not  stood  stock  still  for  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
why  should  I  expect  Philadelphia  to? 

And  little  by  little,  as  I  got  my  breath  again  after  my 
first  indignant  surprise,  as  I  pulled  myself  together  after 
my  first  series  of  shocks,  I  began  to  understand  that  the 
wonder  was  that  anything  should  be  left,  and  to  see  that 
Philadelphia  has  held  on  to  enough  of  its  character  and 
beauty  to  impress  the  stranger,  anyway,  with  the  fine 
serenity  that  I  missed  at  every  turn.  Philadelphia  does 
not  "  bristle,"  Henry  James  wrote  of  it  a  very  few  years 
ago,  by  which  he  meant  that  it  does  not  change,  is  incapable 
of  changing,  though  to  me  it  was,  in  this  sense,  so  "  brist- 
ling "  that  I  tingled  all  over  with  the  pricks.  But,  then, 
I  knew  what  Philadelphia  had  been.  That  was  why  I  was 
impressed  fkst  with  the  things  that  had  changed,  why,  also, 
my  pleasure  was  the  keener  in  my  later  discovery  of  the 
things  that  had  not. 

I  can  laugh  now  at  myself  for  my  joy  in  all  sorts  of 
dear,  absurd  trifles  simply  because  of  their  homely  proof 
that  the  new  Philadelphia  had  saved  some  relics  of  the  old. 
What  they  stood  for  in  my  eyes  gave  value  to  the  little 

509 


510  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

iced  Cakes  of  my  childhood ;  to  the  frequent  street  parade, 
glorified  as  it  was  beyond  recognition  by  the  new  presence 
of  the  mounted  police;  to  the  City  Troop,  gorgeous  and 
splendid  as  of  old,  and  as  of  old  turning  out  to  decorate 
every  public  ceremony;  to  the  nice  old-fashioned  "  ma'am," 
unheard  in  England  except,  I  believe,  at  court ;  to  all  the 
town,  including  my  hotel,  getting  ready  for  the  summer 
with  matting  and  gauze  and  grey  Holland.  Old  associa- 
tions, old  emotions,  were  stirred  by  the  fragrance  of  the 
Cinnamon  Bun  that  is  never  so  fragrant  out  of  Philadel- 
phia, and  one  of  the  crudest  disappointments  of  my  re- 
turn was  not  to  be  able  to  devour  it  with  the  untrammelled 
appetite  of  youth  when  it  was  offered  me  in  an  interval 
between  the  Soft-Shell  Crab  and  Ice-cream  of  a  Philadel- 
phia lunch  and  the  Planked  Shad  and  Broiled  Chicken  of 
a  Philadelphia  dinner.  The  row  of  heads  at  the  Philadel- 
phia Club  windows,  so  embarrassing  to  me  in  my  youth, 
borrowed  beauty  from  association.  I  was  thrilled  by  the 
decanter  of  Sherry  or  JNIadeira  on  the  dinner  table,  where 
I  had  not  seen  it  served  in  solitary  grandeur  since  I  had 
last  dined  in  Philadelphia.  The  old  rough  kindliness  of  the 
people — when  they  were  not  aliens — in  the  streets,  in  the 
stores,  in  the  trolleys,  went  to  my  heart.  And  in  larger 
ways,  too,  the  place  filled  me  with  pride  for  its  constancy : 
for  the  steady  development  of  all  that  made  it  great  from 
the  beginning — its  schools,  its  charities,  its  hospitals,  its 
libraries,  its  galleries;  above  all,  for  retaining  what  it 
could  of  its  dignified  reticence  in  keeping  its  private  affairs 


THE  GIRARD  TRUST  COMPANY 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  513 

to  itself.  It  may  live  more  in  public  than  it  did,  but  it  still 
does  not  shriek  all  its  secrets  from  the  house-top.  It  does 
not  thrust  all  its  wealth  down  every  man's  throat.  It  still 
hides  many  of  its  luxurious  private  palaces  behind  modest 
brick  fronts.  It  may  have  broken  out  in  gaudy  hotels  and 
restaurants,  but  Friends  still  continue  to  go  their  peace- 
ful way  completely  apart  in  their  spacious  houses  and 
pleasant  gardens.  Xor  would  any  other  town  be  so  shy 
in  acknowledging  to  itself,  and  boasting  to  others  of,  its 
beauty. 

II 
Philadelphia  has  always  been  over-modest  as  to  its 
personal  appearance, — always  on  the  surface,  indifferent 
to  flattery.  Nobody  would  suspect  it  of  ever  having  heard 
that  to  a  philosopher  like  Voltaire  it  was,  without  his  seeing 
it,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  cities  in  the  universe,  that  a 
matter-of-fact  traveller  like  William  Cobbett  thought  it  a 
fine  city  from  the  minute  he  knew  it,  that  all  the  old  travel- 
writers  had  a  compliment  for  it,  and  all  the  new  travellers 
as  well,  down  to  Li  Hung  Chang,  who  described  it  felici- 
tously as  "  one  of  the  most  smiling  of  cities  " — the  "  Place 
of  a  Million  Smiles."  It  was  not  because  it  had  ceased  to 
be  beautiful  that  it  assumed  this  indifference.  As  I  recall 
it  in  my  youth,  it  was  beautiful  with  the  beauty  Philadel- 
phians  searched  Europe  for,  while  they  were  busy  destroy- 
ing it  at  home — the  beauty  that  life  in  England  has  helped 
me  to  appreciate  as  I  never  did  before,  for  it  has  given  me 
a  standard  I  had  not  when  I  knew  only  Philadelphia. 


oU  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Judged  by  this  standard,  I  found  Philadelphia  in  its 
old  parts  more  beautiful  than  I  remembered  it.  In  a  street 
like  Clinton,  which  has  escaped  the  wholesale  destruc- 
tion, or  in  a  block  here  and  there  in  other  streets  less 
fortunate,  I  felt  as  I  never  had  before  the  austere  loveli- 
ness of  their  red  brick  and  white  marble  and  pleasant 
green  shade.  As  never  before  I  realized  the  Eighteenth- 
Century  perfection  of  the  old  State  House  and  Carpenter's 
Hall.  I  know  of  no  English  building  of  the  same  date 
that  has  the  dignity,  the  harmonious  proportions,  the  re- 
strained ornament  of  the  State  House, — none  with  so 
noble  a  background  of  stately  rooms  for  those  stately 
figures  who  were  the  makers  of  history  in  Philadelphia. 
And  the  old  churches  came  as  a  new  revelation.  I  ques- 
tioned if  I  ever  could  have  thought  an  English  Cathedral 
in  its  close  lovelier  than  red  brick  St.  Peter's  in  its  walled 
graveyard  on  a  spring  day,  with  the  green  in  its  first 
freshness  and  the  great  wide-spreading  trees  throwing 
soft  shadows  over  the  grassy  spaces  and  the  grey  crmn- 
bling  gravestones.  The  pleasure  it  gave  me  positively  hurt 
when — after  walking  in  the  filth  of  Front  Street,  where 
the  old  houses  are  going  to  rack  and  ruin  and  where  a  Jew 
in  his  praying  shawl  at  the  door  of  a  small,  shabby  syna- 
gogue seemed  the  explanation  of  the  filth — I  came  upon 
the  little  green  garden  of  a  graveyard  round  the  Old 
Swedes'  Church,  sweet  and  still  and  fragrant  in  the  May 
sunshine,  though  the  windows  of  a  factory  looked  down 
upon  it  to  one  side,  and  out  in  front,  on  the  railroad  tracks, 


^<S>.c  \>^^d^d.  ^^^on.  c^6.^  T^^^//^Ta<2U^lMjiiu.e^<m^ 


TWELFTH  STREET  MEETING  HOUSE 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  517 

huge  heavy  freight  cars  rattled  and  rumbled  and  shrieked 
by,  and  beyond  them  rose  the  steam  stacks  of  steamers 
from  Antwerp  and  Liverpool  that  unload  at  its  door  the 
hordes  of  aliens  who  not  only  degrade,  but  "  impoverish  " 
Philadelphia,  as  the  Irish  porter  in  my  hotel  said  to  me. 
And  what  pleasure  again,  after  the  walk  full  of  memories 
along  Front  and  Second  Streets,  with  the  familiar  odours 
and  Philadelphia  here  quiet  as  of  yore,  to  come  upon 
Christ  Church  a  part  of  the  street  like  any  French  Cathe- 
dral and  not  in  its  own  little  green,  but  with  a  greater 
architectural  pretension  to  make  up  for  it,  and  with  a 
gravestone  near  the  sanctuary  to  testify  that  John  Penn, 
one  at  least  of  the  Penn  family,  lies  buried  in  Philadelphia. 
And  what  greater  pleasure  in  the  old  Meeting  Houses — 
why  had  I  not  known,  in  youth  as  in  age,  their  tranquil 
loveliness  ? — ^What  repose  there,  down  Arch  Street,  in  that 
small  simple  brick  building,  with  its  small  simple  green, 
one  bed  of  tulips  at  the  door,  shut  off  from  the  noise  and 
confusion  and  dirt  and  double  trolley  lines  of  Arch  Street 
by  the  old  high  brick  wall ;  and  no  less  in  that  equally  small 
and  simple  brick  building  in  South  Twelfth  Street,  an  old 
oasis,  or  resting  place,  in  a  new  wilderness  of  sky-scrapers. 
With  these  churches  and  meeting-houses  standing,  can 
Philadelphians  deplore  the  ugliness  of  their  town? 

And  the  old  Eighteenth-Century  houses?  Would  I 
find  them  as  beautiful?  I  asked  myself.  Would  they  sur- 
vive as  triumphantly  the  test  of  my  travelled  years  and 


518  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

more  observant  eyes  ?  How  foolish  the  question,  how  un- 
necessary the  doubt !  ]More  beautiful  all  of  them,  because 
nn'  eyes  were  better  trained  to  appreciate  their  archi- 
tectural merit ;  more  peaceful  all  of  them,  with  the  feeling 
of  peace  so  intense  I  wondered  whether  it  came  of  the 
Colonial  architecture  or  of  associations^  with  it. 

Germantown  may  be  built  up  beyond  recognition,  its 
Lanes,  many  of  them,  tiu-ned  into  Streets  for  no  reason 
the  average  man  can  see,  but  some  of  the  big  old  estates, 
are  still  green  and  untouched  as  if  miles  away,  and 
the  old  houses  are  more  guarded  than  ever  from  change. 
One  by  one,  I  returned  to  them : — Stenton  restored,  but  as 
yet  so  judicially  that  Logan  would  to-day  feel  at  home  in 
its  halls  and  rooms,  on  its  stairway,  outside  by  the  dove- 
cote and  the  wistaria-covered  walls, — at  home  in  the  garden 
full  of  tulips  and  daisies,  and  old  familiar  Philadelphia 
roses  and  Johnny-jmiip-ups,  enclosed  by  hedges,  every 
care  taken  to  plant  in  it  afresh  just  the  blossoms  he  loved. 
But  what  would  he  have  said  to  the  factories  opposite  ?  To 
the  rows  of  little  two-story  houses  creeping  nearer  and 
nearer  ?  And  the  Chew  House — could  the  veterans  of  the 
Revolution  return  to  it,  as  the  veterans  of  the  Civil  War 
return  every  year  to  Gettysburg,  how  well  they  would 
know  their  w^ay  in  the  garden,  how  well,  in  the  wide- 
pillared  hall  with  the  old  portraits  on  the  white  wall,  and 
in  the  rooms  with  their  Eighteenth-Century  panelling  and 
cornices  and  fire-places,  and  in  the  broad  hall  upstairs 


WYCK 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  521 

could  they  follow  the  movements  of  the  enemy  that  lost  for 
them  the  Battle  of  Germantown?  And  Wyck — white, 
cloistered,  vine-laden,  with  fragrant  garden  and  shade- 
giving  trees!  And  the  Johnson  House,  and  the  Wistar 
House,  and  the  Morris  House.  And  how  many  other  old 
houses  beyond  Germantown!  Solitude,  and  Laurel  Hill, 
and  Arnold's  Mansion  in  the  Park,  Bartram's  at  Gray's 
Ferry. 

I  thought  first  I  would  not  put  Bartram's  to  the  test, 
no  matter  how  bravely  the  others  came  out  of  it — Bart- 
ram's, associated  with  the  romance  of  work  and  the  dawn 
of  my  new  life.  But  how  glad  I  am  that  I  thought  twice 
and  went  back  to  it!  For  I  found  it  beautiful  as  ever, 
though  I  could  reach  it  by  trolley,  and  though  it  was  un- 
recognizably spick  and  span  in  the  little  orchard,  and 
under  the  labelled  trees,  and  by  the  old  house  and  the  old 
stables,  and  in  the  garden  where  gardeners  were  at  work 
among  the  red  roses.  But  the  disorder  has  not  been  quite 
done  away  with  in  the  wilderness  below  the  garden,  and 
there  was  the  bench  by  the  river,  and  there  the  outlook  up 
and  down — had  so  many  chimneys  belched  forth  smoke 
and  had  the  smoke  been  as  black  on  the  opposite  bank,  up 
the  river,  in  the  old  days?  Certainly  there  had  not  been  so 
many  ghosts — not  one  of  those  that  now  looked  at  me  with 
reproachful  eyes,  asking  me  what  I  had  done  with  the 
years,  for  which  such  ambitious  plans  had  been  made  on 
that  very  spot  ages  and  ages  ago? 


522  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

III 

Philadelphia  is  not  responsible  for  the  ghosts;  they  are 
my  affair ;  but  it  has  made  itself  responsible  for  the  beauty, 
not  only  at  Bartram's  but  at  as  many  other  of  the  old 
places  as  it  has  been  able  to  lay  claims  upon,  converting- 
them  into  what  the  French  would  call  historic  monuments. 
And  Philadelphia,  with  the  help  of  Colonial  Dames,  and 
an  Automobile  Club,  and  those  societies  and  individuals 
who  have  learned  at  last  to  love  the  Philadelphia  monu- 
ments though  still  indifferent  to  the  town,  has  not  been  too 
soon  in  prescribing  the  desperate  remedies  their  desperate 
case  demands.  In  the  new  care  of  these  old  places,  as  well 
as  in  the  new  devotion  to  the  old  names  and  the  old 
families,  in  the  new  keenness  for  historic  meetings  and 
commemorations,  in  the  new  local  lectures  on  local  sub- 
jects and  traditions,  in  the  very  recent  restoration  of  Con- 
gress Hall,  in  all  this  new  native  civic  patriotism  I  seemed 
to  see  Philadelphia's  desperate,  if  unconscious,  struggle 
against  the  modern  invader  of  the  town's  ancient  beauty 
and  traditions.  The  grown-up  aliens  who  can  be  per- 
suaded, as  I  am  told  they  can  be,  to  come  and  listen  to 
papers  on  their  own  section  of  the  town,  whether  it  be 
Southwark,  or  ]Manayunk,  or  Frankford,  or  Society  Hill, 
or  the  Xorthern  Liberties,  will  probably  in  the  end  look 
up  the  old  places  and  their  history  for  themselves,  just 
as  the  little  aliens  will  who,  in  the  schools,  are  given  prizes 
for  essays  on  local  history: — offer  anything,  even  a  school 


.-  **■&!  JT-T'Xl, 


^*- 

^-^V- 


THE  MASSED  SKY-SCRAPERS  ABOVE  THE  HOUSETOPS 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  525 

prize,  to  a  Russian  Jew,  and  he  will  labour  for  it,  in  this 
case  working  indirectly  for  patriotism. 

But  I  am  not  sure  that  the  greatest  good  the  Society 
of  Colonial  Dames  is  doing  is  not  in  emphasizing  the  value 
of  the  past  to  those  who  date  back  to  it.  It  has  helped 
one  group  of  Philadelj)hians  to  realize  that  there  are  other 
people  in  their  town  no  less  old  as  Philadelphians  and 
more  important  in  the  history  of  Philadelphia,  what  is 
called  society  luckily  not  having  taken  possession  of  the 
Colonial  Dames  in  Philadelphia  as  in  New  York.  If  all 
who  date  back  see  in  the  age  of  their  families  their  pass- 
port into  the  aristocracy  of  Philadelphia  and  therefore 
of  America,  they  may  join  together  as  a  formidable  force 
against  the  advance  of  the  formidable  alien.  Mr.  Arnold 
Bennett  was  amused  to  discover  that  every  Bostonian 
came  over  in  the  Mayflower,  but  he  does  not  understand 
the  necessity  for  the  native  to  hold  on  like  grim  death  to 
the  family  tree — pigmy  of  a  tree  as  it  must  seem  in  Eu- 
rope— if  America  is  to  remain  American.  My  one  fear  is 
lest  this  zeal,  new  to  me,  is  being  overdone,  for  I  fancy 
I  see  an  ill-concealed  threat  of  a  new  reaction,  this  time 
against  it.  What  else  does  the  Philadelphian's  toying  with 
the  cause  of  the  "  loyalists  "  during  the  Revolution  and 
his  belated  espousal  of  it  mean,  unless  perhaps  the  childish 
Anglomania  which  fashion  has  imposed  upon  Philadel- 
phia? People  are  capable  of  anything  for  the  sake  of 
fashion.  The  ugliest  blot  on  the  history  of  Philadelphia 
is  its  running  after  the  British  when  they  were  in  posses- 


d'ia  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

sion  of  the  town  that  winter  we  ought  to  try  to  forget 
instead  of  commemorating  its  feasts — that  winter  when 
Philadelphia  danced  and  Washington  and  his  troops 
starved.  Now  Philadelphia  threatens  another  blot  as  ugly 
by  upholding  the  citizens  who  woulcj  have  kept  the 
British  there  altogether.  However,  this  is  as  yet  only 
a  threat,  Philadelphians  are  too  preoccupied  in  their 
struggle  for  sm'vival. 

IV 

Xot  only  the  new  patriotism,  but  the  new  architecture 
is  Colonial.  For  long  after  Colonial  days  Philadelphia 
kept  to  red  brick  and  white  facings  in  town,  to  grey  stone 
and  white  porches  in  Germantown,  often  losing  the  old 
dignity  and  fine  proportions,  but  preserving  the  unity,  the 
harmony  of  Penn's  original  scheme,  and  the  repose  that  is 
the  inevitable  result  of  unity.  But  there  were  many  terri- 
ble breaks  before  and  during  my  time — breaks  that  gave 
us  the  Public  Buildings  and  Memorial  Hall  and  many  of 
the  big  banks  and  insurance  offices  down  town,  and  a  long 
list  of  regrettable  mistakes; — breaks  that  burdened  us 
with  the  brown  stone  period  fortunately  never  much  in 
favour,  and  the  Furness  period  which  I  could  wish  had 
been  less  in  favour  so  much  too  lavish  was  its  gift  of  un- 
desirable originality,  and  the  awful  green  stone  period  of 
which  a  church  here  and  a  big  mansion  there  and  sub- 
stantial buildings  out  at  the  University,  too  substantial  to 
be  pulled  down  for  many  a  day,  rise,  a  solid  reproach  to 


SUNSET.     PHILADELPHIA  FROM  ACROSS  THE  DELAWARE 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  529 

us  for  our  far  straying  from  righteousness;  breaks  that 
courted  and  won  the  admiration  of  Philadelphia  for  imita- 
tions of  any  and  every  style  that  wasn't  American,  espe- 
cially if  it  was  English,  Philadelphia  tremendously 
pleased  with  itself  for  the  bits  borrowed  from  the  English 
Universities  and  dumped  down  in  its  own  University  and 
out  at  Bryn  ISIawr,  there  as  unmistakable  aliens  as  our 
own  Rhodes  Scholars  are  at  Oxford. 

But  from  the  moment  Philadelphia  began  to  look  up 
its  genealogy  and  respect  it,  the  revival  of  Colonial  was 
bound,  sooner  or  later,  to  follow.  It  meant  a  change  from 
which  I  could  not  escape,  had  I  deliberately  refused  to  see 
the  many  others.  I  was  face  to  face  with  it  at  every  step 
I  took,  in  every  direction  I  went — from  the  Navy  Yard  on 
League  Island  to  the  far  end  of  North  Broad  Street ;  from 
Germantown,  the  old  grey  stone  here  returned  to  its  own 
again,  to  West  Philadelphia;  from  the  University  where 
the  Law  School  building  looks  grave  and  distinguished 
and  genuine  in  the  midst  of  sham  Tudor  and  sham  I  hardly 
know  what,  and  deplorable  green  stone,  to  the  Racquets 
Club  in  town;  from  the  tallest  sky-scraper  to  the  smallest 
workman's  dwelling — it  was  Colonial  of  one  sort  or  an- 
other: sometimes  with  fine  results,  at  others  with  Colonial 
red  brick  and  white  facings  and  Colonial  gables  and 
Colonial  columns  and  Colonial  porches  so  abused  that, 
after  passing  certain  Colonial  abortions  repeated  by  the 
dozens,  the  hundreds,  the  thousands,  in  rows  upon  rows 
of  two-story  houses,  all  alike  to  the  very  pattern  of  the 

34 


530  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

awning  and  the  curves  of  the  rocking  chair  on  the  in- 
variable porch,  I  had  it  in  my  heart  to  wish  that  Phila- 
delphia had  never  heard  the  word  Colonial.  However, 
on  the  whole,  more  good  has  been  done  than  harm.  The 
original  model  is  a  fine  one,  it  belongs  to  Philadelphia, 
and  in  reviving  it  the  Philadelphia  arcWtect  is  working 
along  legitimate  lines. 

But  even  as  I  write  this,  I  realise  that  it  is  not  to 
the  revival  of  Colonial  that  Philadelphia  owes  all  its  new 
beauty.  Indeed,  the  architecture  that  has  done  most  for  it 
in  its  new  phase  is  that  from  which  least  would  be  expected 
by  those  who  believe  in  appropriateness  or  utility  as  in- 
dispensable to  architectural  beauty.  A  town  that  has 
plenty  of  space  to  spread  out  indefinitely  has  no  reason 
whatever  to  spread  up  in  sky-scrapers,  and  this  is  pre- 
cisely what  Philadelphia  has  done  and,  moreover,  looks  all 
the  better  for  having  done.  Its  sky-scrapers  compose 
themselves  with  marvellous  effectiveness  as  a  centre  to 
the  town,  though  they  threaten  by  degrees  to  become  too 
scattered  to  preserve  the  present  composition;  they  pro- 
vide an  astounding  and  ever-varying  arrangement  of 
towers  and  spires  from  neighbouring  corners  and  cross- 
ings; they  give  new  interest  as  a  background  to  some 
simple  bit  of  old  Philadelphia,  as  where  Wanamaker's 
rises  sheer  and  high  above  the  little  red  brick  meeting- 
house in  Twelfth  Street;  they  add  to  the  charm  of  some 
ambitious  bit  of  new  Philadelphia  as  where  the  little 
Girard  Trust  Building — itself  a  happy  return  to  standards 


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THE  UNION  LEAGUE  BETWEEN  THE  SKY-SCRAPERS 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  533 

that  gave  us  Girard  College  and  the  Mint  and  Fair- 
mount  Water-Works — ^stands  low  among  the  clustered 
towers,  just  as  many  a  town  in  the  Alps  or  Apennines 
lies  low  in  the  cup  of  the  hills,  and  is  the  lovelier  for 
it;  they  redeem  from  ugliness  buildings  of  later  periods, 
as  where  they  give  the  scale  in  the  most  surprising  fashion 
to  the  Union  League;  from  far  up  or  down  the  long 
straight  line  of  Broad  Street  they  complete  the  perspective 
as  impressively  as  the  Arc  de  Triomphe  completes  that 
other  impressive  perspective  from  the  Garden  of  the 
Tuileries  in  Paris.  They  are  as  beautiful  when  you  see 
them  from  the  bridges  or  from  the  Park,  a  great  group 
of  towers  high  above  the  houses,  high  above  the  lesser 
towers  and  spires,  high  above  the  curls  and  wisps  of  smoke 
that  now  hang  over  Philadelphia;  and  from  the  near 
country  they  give  to  the  low-lying  town  a  sky-line  that 
for  loveliness  and  grandeur  is  not  to  be  surpassed  by  the 
famous  first  view  of  Pisa  across  the  Italian  plain. 

Philadelphia  is,  in  truth,  such  a  beautiful  town  that  I 
am  surprised  the  world  should  be  so  slow  in  finding  it  out. 
The  danger  to  it  now  is  the  Philadelphian's  determination 
to  thrust  beauty  upon  it  at  any  cost,  not  knowing  that  it 
is  beautiful  already.  There  is  too  much  talk  everywhere 
about  town-planning  as  a  reform,  as  a  part  of  the  whole 
tiresome  business  of  elevating  the  masses.  As  I  have  said, 
Penn  talked  no  nonsense  of  that  kind,  nor  did  Sir  Chris- 
topher Wren  when  he  made  the  fine  design  that  London 
had  not  the  sense  to  stick  to,  nor  L'Enfant  when  he  laid 


534  OI'R  PHILADELPHIA 

out  Washington.  For  the  town  that  gets  into  the  clutches 
of  the  reformer,  I  feel  much  as  Whistler  did  for  art — 
"  What  a  sad  state  the  slut  is  in  an  these  gentlemen  can 
help  her."  A  town,  like  a  woman,  should  cultivate  good 
looks  and  cannot  be  too  fastidious  in  every  detail.  But 
that  is  no  reason  why  it  should  confuse  thisMecent  personal 
care  wdth  a  moral  mission.  There  is  too  much  reform  in 
Philadelphia  just  now  for  my  taste,  or  its  good.  The 
idea  of  the  new  Parkway ;  with  fine  buildings  like  the  new 
Free  Library  and  the  new  Franklin  Institute,  along  its 
route  through  the  town ;  with  the  City  Hall  at  one  end  and 
the  fine  ncAv  Art  Gallery  in  the  Park  at  the  other ;  promises 
well,  and  I  suppose  that  eventually  the  silly  little  wooden 
pergolas  will  disappear  and  the  new  buildings  go  up  in 
their  place.  But  though  I  know  it  sounds  like  shocking 
heresy,  I  should  feel  more  confidence  if  its  completion 
were  in  the  hands  of  the  old  corrupt  government  we  never 
tired  of  condemning,  which  may  have  stolen  some  of 
our  money  but  at  least  gave  us  in  return  a  splendidly 
planned  and  thoroughly  well-kept  Park,  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  in  the  Morld.  I  believe  that  not  only  this  monu- 
mental, but  more  domestic  experiments  are  in  view,  the 
workman  this  time  to  profit — our  old  self-reliant  American 
workman  to  have  a  taste  of  the  benevolent  interference  that 
has  taken  the  backbone  out  of  the  English  workman. 
Rumours  have  reached  me  of  emissaries  sent  to  spy  out 
the  land  in  the  Garden  Cities  of  Germany  and  England. 
But  what  have  we,  in  our  far-famed  Citj^  of  Homes,  to 


y  i 


IP  BROAD  STREET  EROM  LEAGUE  ISLAND 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY   537 

learn  from  other  people's  Garden  Cities?  For  comfort, 
is  the  workman  anywhere  better  off  at  a  lower  rent  than 
in  the  old  streets  of  neat  little  two-story  brick  houses,  or 
in  the  new  streets  of  luxurious  little  Colonial  abortions? 
And  what  does  he  want  with  the  reformer's  gardens  when 
he  lives  in  the  green  country  town  of  Philadelphia? 

V 

Philadelphia  might  have  lost  more  of  its  old  architec- 
ture and  been  less  successful  with  its  new,  and  would  still 
be  beautiful,  for  as  yet  it  has  not  ceased  to  respect  Penn's 
wish  to  see  it  fair  and  green.  It  is  not  so  green  as  it  was, 
I  admit — not  so  green  as  in  the  days  of  my  childhood  to 
which,  in  looking  back,  the  spring  always  means  streets 
too  well  lined  with  trees  for  my  taste,  since  in  every  one 
those  horrid  green  measuring  worms  were  waiting  to  fall, 
crawling,  upon  me.  There  are  great  stretches  in  some 
streets  from  which  the  trees  have  disappeared,  partly  be- 
cause they  do  not  prosper  so  well  in  the  now  smoke-laden 
air;  partly  because  every  one  blown  down  or  injured  must 
be  rejDlaced  if  replaced  at  all  by  some  thrifty  citizen  held 
responsible  for  whatever  damage  it  may  do  through  no 
fault  of  his;  partly,  I  believe,  because  at  one  time  street 
commissioners  ordered  one  or  two  in  front  of  a  house  to 
be  cut  down,  charged  the  landlord  for  doing  it,  and  found 
too  much  profit  not  to  persevere  in  their  disastrous  policy. 
Still,  though  Philadelphians  in  summer  fly  to  little  Eu- 
ropean towns  to  escape  the  streets  they  deplore  as  arid  in 


538  OUR  PHILADELPHIA 

Philadelphia,  I  know  of  no  other  town  as  large  that  is  as 
green.  The  notes  I  made  in  Philadeljjhia  are  fnll  of  my 
surprise  that  I  should  have  forgotten  how  green  and  shady 
are  its  streets,  how  tender  is  this  green  in  its  first  spring 
growth  under  the  high  luminous  sky,  how  lovely  the 
wistaria-draped  walls  in  town  and  the  dogwood  in  the 
suburbs.  Walk  or  drive  in  whatever  direction  I  chose, 
and  at  every  crossing  I  looked  up  or  down  a  long  green 
vista,  so  that  I  understood  the  Philadelphia  business  man 
who  described  to  me  his  daily  walk  from  his  Spruce  Street 
house  to  the  Reading  Terminal  as  a  lesson  in  botany. 
On  the  other  side  of  the  Schuylkill,  in  any  of  the  suburbs, 
every  street  became  a  leafy  avenue.  There  were  even- 
ings in  that  last  June  I  spent  in  Philadelphia,  when, 
the  ugly  houses  bathed  in  golden  light  and  the  trees  one 
long  golden-green  screen  in  front  of  them,  I  would  not 
have  exchanged  Walnut  or  Spruce  Street  in  West  Phila- 
delphia or  many  a  Lane  in  Germantown,  for  any  famous 
road  or  boulevard  the  world  over.  Really,  the  trees  con- 
vert the  whole  town  into  an  annex,  an  approach  to  that 
Park  which  is  its  chief  green  beauty  and  which,  to  me, 
was  more  than  sufficient  atonement  for  the  corrupt  govern- 
ment Philadelphia  is  said  to  have  groaned  under  all  the 
years  Fairmount  was  growing  in  grace  and  beauty.  And 
beyond  the  Park,  beyond  the  suburbs,  the  leafy  avenues 
run  on  for  miles  through  as  beautiful  country  as  ever  shut 
in  a  beautiful  town. 


FROM  GRAYS  FERRY 


AFTER  A  QUARTER  OF  A  CENTURY  541 

VI 

After  all,  there  is  beauty  enough  left  to  last  my  time, 
and  I  suppose  with  that  I  should  be  content.  But  I  can- 
not help  thinking  of  the  future,  cannot  help  wondering, 
now  that  I  see  the  change  the  last  quarter  of  a  century 
has  made,  what  the  next  will  do  for  Philadelphia — whether 
after  twenty-five  years  more  a  vestige  of  my  Philadel- 
phia will  survive.  I  do  not  believe  it  will ;  I  may  be  wrong, 
but  I  am  giving  my  impressions  for  what  they  are  worth, 
and  nothing  on  my  return  impressed  me  so  much  as  the 
change  everywhere  and  in  everything.  I  think  any  Ameri- 
can, from  no  matter  what  part  of  the  country,  who  has  been 
away  so  long,  must,  on  going  back,  be  impressed  in  the 
same  way — must  feel  with  me  that  Ajnerica  is  growing 
day  by  day  into  something  as  different  as  possible  from 
his  America.  For  my  part,  I  am  just  as  glad  I  shall  not 
live  to  see  the  Philadelphia  that  is  to  emerge  from  the 
present  chaos,  since  I  have  not  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  that, 
whatever  it  may  be,  it  will  be  as  unlike  Philadelphia  as  I 
have  just  learned  to  know  it  again,  as  this  new  Philadel- 
phia is  unlike  my  old  Philadelphia,  the  beautiful,  peace- 
ful town  where  roses  bloomed  in  the  sunny  back-yards  and 
people  lived  in  dignity  behind  the  plain  red  brick  fronts  of 
the  long  narrow  streets. 


INDEX 


Abbey,  Edwin  A.,  .'593 

Academy  of  Fine  Arts,  6-t,  2.'51,  376,  379, 

380,  ,389,  39,5,  402,  i05,  407,  412,  428 
Academy  of  Music,  206,  459 
Acaflemy  of  Natural  Sciences,  64 
Acorn  Club,  494 
Adams,  John,  6,  50,  161,  297,  385,  418- 

422 
Addams,  Clifford,  407 
Adelphia.  the,  499 
Adirondacks  (mountains).  169 
Aitken,  Robert,  310 
Aldrich,  Thomas  Bailey,  243 
Alexander,  John  W..  393 
Alhamhra.  The,  315 
Alicia,  Mother,  371 
Allen's,  125 

America,  new  and  old.  539 
Ameriran,  the  (weekly),  249 
American   Army  crossing  the  Delaware, 

375 
American  Philosophical  Society,  418 
Anfjelo,  Michael,  373 
Annabel.  Miss,  school,  258 
Annals,  Watson's,  314 
Antin.  Mary,  467 
Appian  etchings,  395 
Arabian  \ights.  The,  64 
Arc  de  Triomphe,  405 
Arch  Street  Meeting  House,  120,  517 
Arch  Street  Theatre,  67,  459 
Ardea.  Father,  191,  192 
Arnold.  Matthew,  161,  342-344 
Arnold's  Mansion,  521 
Arrah-na-Pogiie,  67 

Art  Gallery  in  the  Park,  proposed,  534 
Art  (Indu.strial)  School,  257,  330,  332,  405 
Art  yoiiieaii,  408 
Assembly,  the  (social),  15,3-174,  206,  216, 

254,  260,  304,  316,  503 
Atlantic  City,  170,  246,  252,  298 
Atlantic  Monthly,  243,  244,  257 
Augustine's,  60,  148,  151.  15.3,  281,  438, 

4.39,  449 


Bailey,  Banks  &  Biddle,  125,  456 

Bala  Country  Club,  493,  495 

Baldwin's  Locomotive  Works,  228,  477 

Bank,  Philadelphia,  49 

Baptists,  176,  183 

Bar  Harbor,  169 

Barber,  Alice,  396 

Barcelona  (churches  of),  199 

Barrett,  Lawrence,  324 

Barrie  (publisher  of  art  books),  376 

Bartrara,  John,  31,  300,  521 

Bartram's  Garden,  31,  42,  299-303,  337, 

521,  522 
Bayswater,  England,  493 
Beau  Nash,  145 
Beaux,  Cecilia,  406 
Beaux- Arts  (school),  407 
Beidelman  (architecture),  361 
Bellamy  (Looking  Backward),  338 
Bellevue-Stratford  (hotel),  148,  162,  414, 

447,  500,  503 
Belmont  (Fairmount  Park),  210,  299,  430, 

496 
Bennett,  Arnold,  478,  486,  525 
Bibliotheque  Nationale,  12 
Biddle,  Miss  Julia,  399 
Biddies.  50,  145,  214-216 
Biglou-  Papers,  320 
Black  Crook,  The,  67 
Blanchard  (publisher),  313 
Blankenburg,  Rudolph,  465 
Blitz,  Signer,  91 
Blum,  Robert,  artist,  246,  393 
Board  of  Education,  257 
Bobbelin,  Father,  192 
Boker,  George  H.,  316,  323-325 
Booth,  Edwin,  68 
Borghesi  collection  (art),  406 
Borie,  C.  L.  Jr.,  architect,  407 
Bories,  the,  31,  107 
Borrow,  George  Henry,  320 
Boswell,  James,  290 
Boudreau,  Father,  193 
Boudreau,  Mother,  97 

543 


544 


INDEX 


Bowie,  Mrs.,  social  leader,  146,  147 

Boyle,  John,  sculptor.  396 

Bradstreet,  Anne,  309 

Breitmann  Ballad/!,  320,  456 

Brennan,  artist,  393 

Brewster,  Benjamin  Harris,  342 

Briggs,  Richard,  424 

Brillat-Savarin,  414 

British  Museum,  12,  309 

Broad  and  Locust  Streets,  257,  258,  259. 

449 
Broad  and  Walnut,  42 
Broad  Street,  324,  449,  489,  499-503,  529, 

533 
Broad  Street,  North,  459,  529 
Broad  Street  Station,  12 
Brook  Farm,  347 

Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  313,  363 
Browning  Societies,  352 
Bryn  Mawr,  98,  104,  173,  307,  364,  529 
Bullitts,  the,  107 
Bunyan,  John,  308 
Burns's,  126,  210,  456 
Burr,  Anna  Robeson,  363 
Burr,  Charles,  363 
Burton's  Gentleman's  Magazine,  314 
Business  and  Professional  Club,  352 

Cadwallader-Biddle,  343 

Cadwalladers,  50,  145,  216 

Caldwell,  J.  E.  &  Co.,  125,  456 

Callista,  59 

Callowhill,  Hannah,  417 

Callowhill  Street  Bridge,  281 

Camac  Street,  351 

Camden  (N.  J.),  293,  324-329 

Campanini,  opera  singer,  401 

Campbell,  Helen,  338 

Cape  May,  170 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  243 

Carpenter's  Hall,  514 

Carson,  Hampton  L.,  6,  363 

Cary  (publisher),  313 

Casket,  The,  314,  428 

Cassatt,  Mary,  393 

Castleman,  Richard,  6 

Cathedral,  the,  120,   183,   184,   187,   198, 

200,  203 
Catholics,  176,  177-204,  258 


Cavalcaselle,  Giovanni  B.,  402 
Centennial  Exposition,  205-2.32,  233,  234, 

253,  267,  276,  277,  357,  375,  390 
Century,  The,  337 
Champs-Elysees,  405 
Chapman,  Miss,  school,  258 
Charles  the  Bold,  337 
Chartres  Cathedral,  199 
Chartreuse,  the  old,  444 
Chase,  William  M.,  246 
Chester,  54,  152 

Chestnut  Hill,  78,  123,  129,  170,  258 
Chestnut  Street,  125,  144,  220,  227,  325, 

342,  368,  449,  456,  459,  499 
Chestnut  Street  Theatre,  67,  459 
"Chestnut,  Walnut,  Spruce,  and  Pine," 

119,  123,  151,  158,  182,  263,  297,  464 
Chew  House,  297,  298,  518 
Childs,  George  W.,  113,  342,  499 
Chippendale  furniture,  289 
Christ  Church,  114,   120,   183,  188,  277 

517 
Christ  Church  Burial  Ground,  120,  281 
Church  (painting),  246 
Church  of  England,  183 
Cimabue,  Giovanni,  402 
City  Companies  in  London,  152 
City  Hall,  259,  260,  405,  489,  526,  534 
City  of  Homes,  481,  534 
City  Troop,  64,  452,  510 
Civic  Club,  494 
Civil  War,  the,  130,  146,  518 
Claghorn's  collection  of  old  prints,  376, 

394 
Clements,  Gabrielle,  396 
Clinton  Street,  514 
Clover  Club,  152,  443 
Club  (Art),  South  Broad  Street,  406 
Coates,  Mrs.  Florence  Earle,  336,  362 
Cobbett,  William,  440,  485,  513 
Coghlan,  Father,  193 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  324 
College  Club,  the,  494 
Colonial  (American)  art,  381,  389 
Colonial  Congress,  253,  267 
Colonial  Dames,  219,  221,  361,  522,  525 
Colonial  days,  283,  526 
Colonial  doorways,  361 
Colonial  history,  9 


INDEX 


545 


Colonial  houses,  6,  36,  73,  158,  282,  297, 
298,  382, 443, 445,  460, 496, 518,  526,  529 

Colonial  life  and  society,  6,  443 

Colonists,  495 

Colonnade  (hotel),  148 

Columbia  (College),  364 

Comegys,  Mrs.,  school,  258 

Complete  Cookery  (Miss  Leslie),  423-430 

Concord  (Mass.),  347-348 

Coney  Island,  213 

Conflans  (convent),  175 

Congress  Hall,  522 

Connor,  Mrs.,  social  leader,  147 

Contemporary  Club,  352 

Continent,  Our,  252,  293 

Continental  (hotel),  148 

Convent,  27,  31,  34,  36,  47,  55.  59,  63,  67, 
68,  72  sq.,  104,  117,  126,  133-137,  175 
sq.,  205,  238,  241,  258,  368,  372,  373, 
374,  451 

Convent  at  Paris,  222 

Cooper,  Colin  Campbell,  396 

Cope,  Walter,  architect,  407 

Copley,  John  Singleton,  389 

Country  Clubs,  152,  162,  447,  494-496 

Courts  (of  law),  468,  500 

Cox,  Kenyon  (painting),  246 

Cramp's  shipyard,  228,  477 

"Crazy  Norah,"  27,  35,  375 

Crowe,  Joseph  Archer,  402 

Cruikshank  drawings,  375 

Curtis  Publishing  Co.  Building,  355 

Cushman,  Charlotte,  68 

Dana,  William  P.  W.,  artist,  393 
Dancing  Cla.ss,   138,   139,   143-145,   147, 

148,  157,  182,  184,  203,  254,  260,  304, 

316,  503 
Darlington  butter,  440 
Darlington,  J.  G.  &  Co.,  125,  456 
Darwin,  Charles,  242 
Daughters  of  Pennsylvania,  219,  221 
Davenports,  the  (actors),  64 
Davis,  Clarke,  246 
Davis,  Mrs.  Rebecca  Harding,  336 
Davis,  Richard  Harding,  336 
Day,  Frank  Miles,  architect,  407 
Declaration  of  Independence,   158,   214, 

227,  253,  267,  418,  119 


Decorative  Art  Club,  399 

Delaware  River,  278,  294,  308,  455 

Dexter's,  35,  88,  126,  456 

Dickens,  Charles,  6,  59,  375,  427 

Dickinson,  Jonathan,  15,  313 

Dillaye,  Blanche,  396 

Domestic  Economy  (Miss  Leslie),  428 

Drama-Reforming  Societies,  352 

Dreka  Co.  (engraver),  125,  148,  151,  456 

Drew,  Mrs.  John  (actress),  68 

Drexel,  Anthony  J.,  342 

Drexel  Institute,  405 

Duclaux,  Mme  (Mary  Robinson),  260 

Duke  of  Westminster's  collection   (art), 

406 
Dundas  house,  42,  108,  459 
Dutch  descent,  219 
Dutch  in  New  York,  16 
Dutch  Jew,  467 

Earle's,  125 

Eastern  Shore,  Maryland,  219,  245,  246 

Eberlein,  Harold  Donaldson,  6,  361 

Education,  Board  of,  257 

Eleventh  Street,  34,  48 

Eleventh  and   Spruce   (streets),   44,   47, 

48  sq.,  94,  102,  104,  314,  427,  430 
Eliot,  George,  401 
Eliphas,  Levi,  242 
Elkins  art  collection,  406 
Ellwanger,  G.  H.,  424 
Elwood,  Thomas,  15,  308 
Episcopal  Academy,   143,   162,   181,  258, 
455 
Head  Master  of,  181 
Episcopalians,  176,  177,  183,  187 
Evening  Telegraph,  246,  341 
Ewing,  Miss  Julia,  341 
Exposition,  Centennial,  205-232 
Eyre,  Wilson,  407 

Fabiola,  59 

Fairmount  Park,  64,  129,   173,  210,  213, 

281,  299,  444,  486,  496,  521,  533,  534, 

538 
Fairmount  Water- Works.  299,  533 
Faith  Gartney's  Girlhood,  59,  335 
Ferris,  Stephen,  394 
Fildes,  Luke,  231 


546 


INDEX 


Fisher,  Sydney  George,  6,  309,  358 

Fishers,  the,  31 

Fish-House  Club,  152,  443 

Fitzgerald,  Edward,  423 

Fool's  Errand,  338 

Forgct-Mc-Sot,  348 

Fourth  of  July,  63 

Fox,  George,  15,  308 

Francesco  da  Rimini,  324 

Frankford,  81,  489,  522 

Franklin,   Benjamin,   24.    166,   215,   216, 

253.  263,  281,  290,  355.  310,  313,  358, 

386.  389.  400.  417,  422.  482 
Franklin  Inn.  351 
Franklin  Institute,  263.  534 
Free  Public  Library,  307.  534 
French  Rerolulion  (Thiers).  375 
Friends,  1,  9,  15,  16,  20,  92,  134,  166,  197, 

203,  258,  283,  289,  290,  294,  307,  309, 

357,  380,  386.  389,  513 
Friends'  School  (Germantown),  258 
Fromuth,  marine  painter,  406 
Front  Street,  278,  281,  290,  326,  514,  517 
Frost,  Arthur  B.,  artist,  393 
Fumess  (architecture),  407,  526 
Furness,  Dr.  Horace  Howard,  332,  335 
Fumess,  Horace  Howard,  Jr.,  362,  363 
Fumess,  William  Henry,  D.D.,  332,  335 

Garber,  Daniel,  407 
Gebbie  and  Barrie,  125,  376 
German  mystics,  176 
Germans  (immigrants),  471 
Germantown,  91,  123,  124,  258,  294,  297, 

336,  468,  477,  496,  518,  521,  526,  529,' 

538 
Germantown  Cricket  Ground,  496 
Gettysburg  (battle-fields),  518 
Gibson  collection,  379 
Gift,  The,  314 

Gilchrist,  Mrs.  Alexander,   119,  284,  287 
Gillespie,  Mrs.,  social  leader,  215,   216, 

253 
Giotto  di  Bondone,  402 
Girard  College,  123,  379,  533 
Girard  House,  148 
Girard  Trust  Building,  530 
Gissing,  George,  239 
Glackens,  William  J.,  illustrator,  406 


Glackmeyer,  Father,  193 

Glasse,  Mrs.  (Cookery  Book),  314,  423- 

428 
Godey's  Lady's  Book,  314,  337 
Gough  Square  (London),  324 
Grafly,  Charles,  sculptor,  407 
Graham's  (Magazine),  314,  337 
Grants,  the,  31 
Gray's  Ferry,  2^1,  299,  521 
Green,  Elizabeth  Shippen,  406 
Greene,  General,  418 
Greland,  Miss,  107 
Griggs  (publisher),  313 
Groton  (school),  162 

Haden,  Seymour,  etchings,  395,  396 

Hale,  Mrs.  Sarah  Josepha,  314,  428 

Hallowell,  Mrs.  Sarah,  341 

Hamilton,  J.  McLure,  393 

Handy,  Moses  P..  245 

Hans  Breitmann,  320,  456 

Harland,  Marion,  428 

Harper's  (magazine),  238,  337 

Harrison,  Alexander,  393 

Harri.son,  Birge,  393 

Harrison,  John,  405 

Harrison,  Mrs.  (Art  Club),  399 

Harvard  (College),  162 

Hassler's  band,  140,  148 

Haverford  (school),  258 

Hawthorne,  Xathaniel,  347 

Hawthorne,  Rose,  347 

Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvania,  6,  157, 

216,  220,  290,  307,  315,  364,  459 
Hogarth's  engravings,  376 
Holloway,  Edward  Stratton,  406 
Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  243 
Hoimesburg,  258 
Holy  Trinity  (church),  183 
Home  .\rts  School  (London),  257 
Homer  and  Colladay's,  125 
Hooper,  Mrs.  Lucy,  341 
Hopkins,  the,  31 
Hopkins,  Dr.  (dentist),  64 
Horticultural  Hall,  347,  503 
Hospital,  Pennsylvania,  24,  114,  277,  358, 

460 
Hotel  Meurice,  222 
Howells,  William  Dean,  259,  401 


INDEX 


547 


Howland's  Hotel  at  Long  Branch,  169 
Hubbell's.  126,  459 
Hudson  River  School,  390 
Hugh  Wynne,  357,  358,  363 
Hughes  and  Muller,  456 
Huguet,  Madame,  77,  85 
Hunt,  Holman,  372,  373 
Huntington  Valley  Club,  495 
Hutchinson  Ports,  363 

Impressionists  (artists),  390 

Independence  Hall,  467 

Independence  Square,  355,  467 

Industrial  Art  School,  257,  330,  396,  399 

Ingersolls,  the,  145 

Initials,  The,  59 

International  expositions,  213,  231,  253 

Irish  immigrants,  471 

Irving,  Henry,  401 

Irving,  Washington,  315 

Irwin,  Miss,  school,  140,  175,  258 

Italians  (immigrants),  464,  468 

James,  Henry,  6,  16,  401,  509 

Janauschek  (actress),  348 

Janvier,  Thomas  Allibone,  169,  363,  334- 

437,  443 
Jastrow,  Dr.  Morris,  364 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  50,  386,  418 
Jenkins,  Howard,  249 
Jesuits,  191,  193,  197 
Jew,  Dutch,  467 
Jew,  Pennsylvania,  467,  514 
Jew,  Russian.  214,  282,  283,  297,  361,  460, 

464-473,  525 
Jews,  religious  liberty  of,  177 
Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  324 
Johnson  House,  297,  521 
Johnson's,  John  G.,  art  collection,  406 
Jones's,  126,  210,  444,  456 
Jourdain,  M.,  282 
June,  Jenny,  428 

Kate  Vincent,  178 
Keatings,  the,  31 
Kellogg,  Clara  Louise,  67 
Kensington,  228,  297,  477 
Kensington,  England,  493 
Keppel,  Frederick,  370 


Kings,  the,  31 
Kirk,  John  Foster,  337 
Kirkbride's  Insane  Asylum,  263 
Kneller,  portrait-painter,  389 
Knight,  Ridgway,  393 
Kugler,  Franz,  402 

La  Belle  Helene,  68 
La  Grande  Duchesse,  68 
La  Pierre  House,  148 
Ladies'  Home  Journal,  355 
Ladies  of  the  Sacred  Heart,  72,  93 

Convent,  72  sq. 
Lady  of  Shalotf,  27,  373 
Lalanne  etchings,  395 
Lamb,  Charles,  126,  324 
Lamplighter,  The,  56 
Long,  John  Luther,  363 
Lathrop,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  George,  347 
Latin  Quarter,  411 
Laurel  Hill,  521 
Law  Courts,  468,  500 
Law  School,  building,  529 
Lea,  Henry  Charles,  313,  363 
League  Island,  529 
Leary's,  126 

Ledger  (newspaper),  113,  341,  355 
Lee,  Vernon  (Violet  Paget),  260 
Leland,    Charles   Godfrey,    42,    234-238, 

240-244,  254,  257,  263,  272,  275,  276, 

316,  319-330,  332,  335,  344-348,  396, 

399,  405 
Leland,  Charles  Godfrey,  Memoirs  of,  276 
L'Enfant  (architect),  533 
Leslie,  Margaret  (artist),  396 
Leslie,  Miss,  Cookery  Book,  313,  423-437 
Levi,  Eliphas,  242 
Lewises,  50 

Li  Hung  Chang,  20,  513 
Library,  Bryn  Mawr  College,  307 
Library  of  Congress,  309 
Library,  Free  Public,  307,  534 
Library,  Friends',  Germantown,  307 
Library,  Historical  Society,  307 
Library,  Mercantile,  114,  241 
Library,  Philadelphia,  24,  114,  241,  290, 

307,  455 
Library,  Ridgway,  241,  307,  364  * 

Life  of  Blake,  119 


548 


INDEX 


Lionardo  da  \'inci,  402 
Lippincott,  Horace  Mather,  6,  361 
Lippincott,  J.  R.,  124,  313 
Lippincott's  (book-store),  125,  313,  315 
Lippi)icolt'.s  Magazine,  243,  314,  315,  337, 

341,  427 
Lithuanians  (immigrants),  468,  473 
"Little  England"  of  Kensington,  19 
"Little  Street  of  Clubs,  the,"  351,  406 
Lires  of  Ihe  Artists,  373 
Locust  Street,  472 
Logan,  Deborah,  309 
Logan,  James,  31,  177,  184,  241,  307,  417, 

421,  518 
Logan  Square,  120,  162,  500 
Loganian  Library  (see  Ridgway),  364 
Lombard  Street,  472 
Long  Branch,  169 
Longfellow,  Henry  W.,  320,  329 
Looking  Backirard,  338 
Lost  Heiress,  The,  59 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  316 

Macalisters,  the,  31 

McCalls,  the,  158 

McCarter,  Henry,  artist,  407 

MacVeagh,  Wayne,  343 

Madeira   (wine),  55,   153,  417-423,  506, 

510 
Maennerchor  Garden,  500 
Main  Line,  31,  123,  297 
Main  Street  in  Germantown,  297 
Manayunk.  522 
Maria,  Father  de,  191 
Marion,  General  Francis,  216 
"Market,  Arch,  Race  and  Vine,"  281 
Market  Street,  119,  120,  123,  157,  281, 

294,  310,  329,  451,  456,  489 
Martin,  Madame,  137,  138 
Maryland,  Eastern  Shore  of,  219 
Matisse,  artist,  402 
Mayflower  (ship),  219,  525 
Meeting-Houses,  188,  281,  517 
Meg  Merrilies,  27,  68,  375 
Memorial  Hall,  213,  405,  526 
Mennonites  in  Germantown,  176 
Mercantile  Library,  114,  241,  307 
Merritt,  Mrs.  Anna  Lea,  393 
Methodists,  183 


MiflBin,  Mrs.  (Art  Club),  399 

Millais,  John  Everett,  275,  392 

Miller,  Leslie,  396 

Milton,  John,  308 

Mint,  United  States,  108,  130,  379,  459, 

533 
Mischief  in  the  Middle  Ages,  243 
Mitchell,  Dr.  S.  Weir,  6,  357,  363,  456 
Moore,  Mrs.  Blc^omfield,  379 
Moran  family,  394 
Moravians,  monasteries  of,  176 
Morrises,  the,  216 
Morris,  Gouverneur,  133 
Morris,  Harrison  S.,  362 
Morris  House,  297,  521 
Morris,  William,  400,  408 
Mother  Goose,  242 
Mount  Airy,  170 
Mount  Pleasant,  31,  299 
Moxon's  Tennyson,  372 
Moyamensing  Prison,  263 
Murillo  (painting),  372 
Mustin's,  125 

Napoleon,  pictures  of,  374 

Narragansett  Pier,  169 

Nash,  Richard  ("Beau"),  145 

Natatorium,  139,  140,  145,  499 

Nation,  the  (New  York),  249 

National  Observer,  294 

Navy  Yard,  529 

New  Century  Club,  494 

New  Testament  (German),  310 

New  Year's  Day,  152 

New  York  magazines,  337 

Newman's  Callista,  59 

Nilsson,  Christine,  401 

Ninth  and  Green  (streets),  489,  500 

Nordau,  Max,  402 

Norrises,  the,  216 

Norris,  Isaac,  15,  417 

North  American,  the,  355 

Northern  Liberties,  522 

Oakdale  Park,  293 
Oakley,  Thornton,  406 
Oakley,  Violet,  406 
Old  Mam'selle's  Secret,  335 
Old  Swedes  Church,  114,  120 


INDEX 


549 


Orpheus  Club,  153 

Ouida's  Guardsman,  275 

Orir  American  Cousin,  67 

Our  Continent,  252,  337,  341 

Our  Convent  Days,  88,  358 

Ovrs,  67 

Oxford  (England),  86,  529 

Oxford,  Dr.  (cookery  books),  424 

Page,  George  Bispham,  architect,  407 

Paget,  Violet  (Vernon  Lee),  260 

Park  (see  Fairmount),  534,  538 

Parkway,  the  new,  405,  534 

Parrish,'  Maxfield,  406 

Parrish,  Stephen,  396 

Patterson,  General,  house  of,  108,  459 

Peale,  Charles  Wilson,  389 

Pegasus  Societies,  352 

Penn  Club,  351 

Penn,  John,  517 

Penn,  "William,  2,  9,  10,  15,  24,  31,  35,  36, 

74,  85,  117,  219,  260,  282,  287-289,  290, 

294,  375,  382,  408,  417,  421,  455,  456, 

474,  500,  526,  533 
Penn,  William,  statue  of,  9 
Pennell,  Joseph.  1,  24,  203,  219,  237,  246, 

268,  271-303,  308,  337,  338,  341,  348, 

351,  357,  368,  376,  380,  393-395,  474 
Pennock  Brothers,  144,  439 
Pennsbury,  31 
Pennsylvania  Historical  Society,  6,  157, 

216,'  290,  315,  364 
Pennsylvania  Hospital,  24,  114,  277,  358, 

460 
Pennsylvania  Jew,  467 
Pennsylvania,  promotion  of  science  by,  309 
Pennsylvania  Railroad,  276 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  Station,  276,  448, 

451' 
Pennsylvania,    University   of,    143,    162, 

173,'  258,  358,  364,  473,  496,  526 
Pennypacker,  Governor,  307 
Peppers,  the,  50,  399 
Peterson's  (magazine),  314,  337 
Philadelphia  Art  Club,  324 
Philadelphia  Bank,  49 
Philadelphia  Club,  153,  316,  443,  510 
Philadelphia  Library,  24,  114,  241,  290, 

307,  313,  315,  455 


Philadelphia  Saturday  Museum,  314 

Phillips,  John  S.,  376 

Philosophical  Society,  American,  418 

Picasso,  artist,  402 

Plastic  Club,  406 

Pocahontas,  9 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  27,  316 

Poor  Richard  (club),  352 

Poor  Richard's  Almanac,  310 

Poore,  Harry,  271,  272 

Pope  of  Rome,  120 

Pope's  Head,  310 

Porter  and  Coates,  125,  315 

Post-Impressionists,  381 

Powhatan,  9 

Pre-Raphaelites,  373,  390 

Presbyterian  Building,  271 

Presbyterians,  176,  183 

Press,  the,  245 

Provence,  60 

Public  Buildings  (see  City  Hall),  10,526 

Public  Industrial  Art  School,  405 

Punch  (London),  252 

Puritans  (New  England),  417 

Putnam  (N.  Y.  publisher),  315 

Pyle,  Howard,  249,  393 

Quakers  (see  Friends),  15 
Queechy,  59,  335 

Race  (Sassafras)  Street.  281 

Racquet  Club,  499,  529 

Rafael  (pictures),  372,  375 

Ralph  (Franklin's  friend),  310 

Randolph  House,  463 

Reading  Terminal,  538 

Redfield,  Edward  W.,  artist,  407 

Rembrandt  (painting),  246,  406 

Renaissance,  period  of,  11 

Repplier,  Agnes,  6,  88,  358 

Revolution    (American),    382,    389,    418, 

518,  525 
Rhodes  scholars,  86,  529 
Richards,  William  T.,  artist,  393 
Ridgway  Library,  241,  307,  364 
Rittenhouse  Smiths,  363 
Rittenhouse  Square,  24,  91,  120,  139,  198, 

456 
Ritz-Carlton  (hotel),  148,  414,  447 


550 


INDEX 


Robin  Hood  (Howard  Pyle's),  249 

Robins,  Edward,  Jr.,  358 

Robins,  Edward,  Sr.,  1,  34,  50,  54,  56,  74, 

81,  107,  111,  123,  130,  138,  178,  181, 

183,  187.  200,  239,  244,  259,  260,  263, 

294,  307,  323,  371,  372,  374,  375,  423, 

427,  459,  500,  505 
Robins,  Grant,  139,  140,  147,  165,  216, 

505 
Robins,  Mrs.  Thomas,  40,  41,  43,  53,  54, 

56,  60,  61,  183,  239,  268,  437 
Robins,  Thomas,  1,  34-36,  41,  43,  48-63, 

107,  178,  183,  219,  222,  307,  314,  357, 

373-375,  413,  421,  459 
Robinson,  Mary  (Mme.  Duclaux),  260 
Rogers,  Fairman,  493 
"Rogers  Group,"  39,  374,  375 
Romanticists  (artists),  390 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  506 
Rorer,  Mrs.  (cookery  book),  428 
Ross,  Betsy,  house  of,  281 
Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  119,  372,  373 
Rossetti,  William  Michael,  119,  284 
Roiitledge,  59 
Royal  Academy,  389,  411 
Royal  Exchange,  411 
Rtibaiyat,  the,  401 
Rubens  (painting),  246 
Rue  de  Rivoli,  225 
Rush,  Dr.  Benjamin,  241,  307 
Rush,  Mrs.,  social  leader,  146,  149 
Ruskin.  John,  287,  400,  402 
Russian  Jew,  214,  282,  283,  297,  361,  460, 

464-471,  473 

Sacred  Heart,  Ladies  of  the,  72 
Convent  of,  72  sq.,  258 
St.  Andrew's  (church),  184 
St.  Augustine's  (church),  198 
St.  Clement's  (church),  184,  278 
St.  James's  (church),  183 
St.  John's  (church),  183,  199,  200,  203 
St.  Joseph's  (church),    64,    91,    183,  184, 

187,  188,  191,  193-199 
St.  Mark's  (church),  183,  200 
St.  Mary's  (church),  184,  198,  199,  278 
St.  Michael's  (church),  198 
St.  Patrick's  (church),  91,  183,  199,  200, 

203 


St.  Paul's  (school),  162 

St.  Peter's  (church),  108,  114,  183,  188, 

277,  463,  514 
Salons  (Paris),  411 
Sargent,  John  S.,  artist,  393 
Sartain.  Mis.s  Emily,  338,  393 
Sartain,  William,  393 
SaHain's  Union  Magazine,  314 
Sassafras  (Race)  Street,  281 
Saturday  Club,  152 
'Saturday  Erening  Post,  355 
Saur's  Xew  Testament,  310 
Sautter's,  126,  444,  449,  456,  506 
Schaumberg,  Emily,  107 
School  Board,  259 
School  of  Industrial  Arts,  257,  330,  332, 

405 
Schools,  Public,  335 
Schuylkill  (river),  173,  276,  281,  294,  299, 

362,  451,  468,  481,  496,  538 
Scott,  Walter,  59 

heroines  of,  27,  375 
novels  of,  197,  335,  336,  427 
Second  Street,  42,  137,  147,  148,  166,  277, 

517 
Second  Street  Market,  114,  120,  277 
Seminary  at  Villanova,  198 
Senat,  Prosper,  395 
Seville  (churches  of),  199 
Shakespeare  Societies,  352 
Shakespeare,  William,  68,  332,  363,  40L 
Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  145,  313 
Sheppard,  J.  B.  &  Sons,  125 
Shinn  (apothecary),  459 
Shippen,  Edward,  42 
Shippen,  Peggy,  31,  162 
"Shippen,  Peggy,"  162,  356 
Shippens,  the,  158 
Simses,  the,  158 
Sketch  Club,  406 
Sky-scrapers,  355,  530 
Slavs  (immigrants),  468,  471 
Smarius,  Father,  193 
Smedley,  William  T.,  artist,  393 
Smith,  Albert,  263 
Smith.  Jessie  Wilcox,  406 
Smith,  Lloyd,  242 
Smith.  Logan  Pearsall,  364 
Smith,  Provost,  house  of,  281 


INDEX 


551 


Society  Hill,  522 

Solon  Shingle,  67 

Sons  of  Pennsylvania,  219,  221 

Sothern,  Edward  Askew,  68 

South  Kensington,  England,  408 

South  Street,  472 

Southwark,  522 

Southworth,  Mrs.  Emma  D.  E.  Nevitt,  59 

Souvenir,  The,  314 

Springett,  Guli,  15 

Spruce  Street,  28,  34,  42,  48  sq.,  60,  63, 

104,  107,  108,  113,  114,  215,  245,  253, 

282,  460,  468,  538 
State  House,  the,  113,  158,  220,  277,  358, 

382,  471,  514 
State  in  Schuylkill,  443 
Station  (Broad  and  Market),  489 
Stations  and  terminals,  12,  28,  276,  481, 

489,  538 
Stations  (railroad),  481,  489,  538 
Steadmans,  the,  31 
Steevens,  George,  449,  478 
Stenton,  31,  297,  298,  518 
Stephens  (artist),  396 
Stephens,  Alice  Barber,  396 
Stephens,  Charles  H.,  396 
Stevenson,  Mrs.  Cornelius,  364 
Stewardson,  John,  architect,  407 
Stewart,  Jules,  393 

Stock  Exchange,  54, 107,  111,  468,486,  500 
Stockton,  Frank  R.,  336,  338 
Stockton,  Louise,  338 
Stokes,  Frank  W.,  artist,  406 
Strawberry  Mansion,  210,  299,  430 
Strawbridge  and  Clothier,  125 
Stuart,  Gilbert,  artist,  389 
Stuart,   Gilbert,   picture   of   Washington 

by,  41,  374,  375,  447 
Swarthmore  (school),  258 
Swedes  (immigrants),  471 
Swedes  Church,  Old,  114,  277,  514 

Telegraph,  Evening,  246 
Temple,  the  (London),  324 
Tennyson's  Poems,  27,  372,  373 
Terminals  (railroad),  12,  481,  489,  538 
Terry,  Ellen,  401 

Thackeray    (William    Makepeace),    151, 
294,  422 


Thanksgiving  Day,  63 

Theatre  Frangais,  68 

Theatres,  67 

Thiers'  French  Revolution,  375 

Third  Street,  28,  107,  111,  113,  134,  137, 

187,  206,  278,  290,  486 
Thomas,  George  C,  307 
Thompson,  "Aunt  Ad,"  342 
Thouron,  Henry,  406 
Torresdale,  28,  31,  72  sq.,  123,  191,  258, 

278,  451 
Tourgee,  Judge  Albion  W.,  252,  338 
Traubel,  Horace,  364 
Traveller,  The,  315 

Treaty  with  the  Indians  (Penn),  375 
Tree,  Beerbohm,  68 
Trollope,  Anthony,  401 
Trotter,  Mary,  396 
Trumbauer,  Horace,  architect,  407 
Tuil.  ries  (Paris),  222,  533 
Twelfth  and  Market,  489 
Twelfth  Street  Market,  54 

Union  League,  152,  443,  447,  533 
University  of  Pennsylvania,  143,  162,  173, 

258,  307,  364,  473,  496,  526,  529 
University,  Provosts  of,  119 
University  School  (architecture),  407 

Van  Rensselaer,  Mrs.  John  King,  363 
Van  Tromp,  Miss,  miniatures,  395 
Vaux,  Richard,  342 
Vicaire  (Bibliographie),  424 
Vienna  Cafes  (Centennial),  210,  227 
Villanova  Seminary,  198 
Villon,  Frangois,  essay  on,  238 
Virginia  Company,  the  first,  219 
Virginia,  early  settlers  in,  216,  219 
Voltaire  (author),  428,  513 

Walnut  Lane,  298,  538 

Walnut  Street,   184,   203,  297,  468,  489, 

494,  538 
Walnut  Street  Theatre,  67 
Wanamaker's,  530 
War,  Civil,  the,  130 
Ward,  Genevieve,  348 
Wardle,  Thomas  (bookseller),  313 
Washington  (city),  226,  534 


55^ 


INDEX 


Washington,  George,  44,   119,  215,  290, 

482,  526 
Washington's  Birthday,  63 
Washington's  household,  44,  166,  433 
Washington,  statue  of,  386 
Waterloo  (eve  of),  254 
Water-works   (Fairmount),   64,   67,   299, 

533 
Watson,  John,  6,  356,  357,  413 
Watts,  Harvey  M.,  362 
Waugh,  Frederick  J.,  marine  painter,  406 
Welsh,  John,  50 
West,  Benjamin,  64,  389 
West  Philadelphia,    126,   294,   297,   468, 

529,  538 
Wharton,  Anne  Hollingsworth,  6,  361 
Whartons,  the,  50,  145,  216 
Whelans,  the,  31 
Whistler,  James  A.  McNeill,  16,  395,  396, 

405,  534 
White,  Ambrose,  78,  120 
White,  Bishop,  290 
White,  Dr.  (dentist),  64 
White,  William,  144 
W^hite,  Willie,  144,  145 
W'hitefield,  George,  177 
Whitman,  Walt,  119,  316,  324-331,  336, 

337,  344,  347,  364 
Whittier,  John  G.,  320 
Wide,  Wide  World,  The,  59,  335 


Widener,  Peter  A.  B.,  307,  406 

Wilde,  Oscar,  344,  347 

Williams,  Dr.  Francis  Howard,  336,  362 

Williams,  Dr.  Takott,  364 

Willing's  Alley,  184 

Willings,  the,  158 

Willis,  N.  P.,  316 

Willow  Grove,  213 

Wilstach  Collectit)n,  405 

Wise,  Herbert  C,  361 

Wissahickon  (creek),  127,  177,  298,  299 

Wistar  House,  297,  521 

Wistar  parties,  146 

Wister,  Mrs.,  authoress,  335,  336 

Wister,  Owen,  363 

"Wister,  Sally,"  162,  356 

Wisters,  the,  107 

Woman  in  White  (German  mystics),  176 

Woman's  School  of  Design,  405 

Wood,  Bishop,  200,  203 

Woodland's,  126 

Wren,  Sir  Christopher,  283,  289,  533 

Wyck,  297,  521 

Wyeth's,  126,  456 

Yale  (college),  162 
Yearly  Meeting,  289 
Yellow  Buskin,  the,  405 

Zantzinger,  C.  C,  architect,  407 
Zola,  Emile,  259 


